================================================================= ALAWON Volume 7, Number 42 ISSN 1069-7799 April 20, 1998 American Library Association Washington Office Newsline In this issue: (178 lines) $500 MILLION IN SERVICES DONATED TO FUTURE INTERNET JUDGE RULED THAT NETWORK SOLUTIONS ASSESSMENT WAS ILLEGAL TAX MILLENNIUM EVENING AT THE WHITE HOUSE APRIL 22; PUBLIC PARTICIPATION ENCOURAGED _________________________________________________________________ $500 MILLION IN SERVICES DONATED TO FUTURE INTERNET On April 14 the Internet2 project took a giant step towards implementation when Vice President Gore announced that three large communication and technology companies will contribute more than $500 million in equipment and services to building a faster Internet network. The companies -- Qwest Communications International, Cisco Systems, and Nortel -- promise to provide advanced equipment to connect universities to the new fiber optic network. The network, now dubbed "Abeline" for the storied frontier-era rail route between Texas and Kansas, is expected to serve 122 major research universities with more sophisticated and faster networking capabilities by the end of 1999. Joseph Nacchio, chief executive officer for Qwest, said that improvements in networking may soon lead experts to measure speeds in "L.O.C.'s" -- the number of times the contents of the Library of Congress could be transmitted per second. The government-supported Next Generation Internet (NGI) initiative will provide grants to universities through the National Science Foundation (NSF) to help defray costs of connections. NGI will also support long term research on ultra high speed networking, principally through Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) grants, and support basic research on the applications of advanced networking. Gore and officials from University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), the group that runs Internet2, predict that the technologies developed for Abeline will soon be available to the wider community of Internet users. They pointed out that the current Internet grew out of earlier DARPA and NSF networking efforts focused on research applications. The Vice-President also announced that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to invest $50-million in 27 long-term research programs that will help enhance Internet technologies. The Clinton Administration's latest FY99 budget proposal requests $110 million for the NGI. _________________________________________________________________ JUDGE RULED THAT NETWORK SOLUTIONS ASSESSMENT WAS ILLEGAL TAX U.S. District Judge Thomas Hogan ruled last week that the $50 million gathered by Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI, the Virginia-based company that registers and maintains Internet addresses, was an illegal tax. The money was part of the "Intellectual Infrastructure Fund," a fund created in a 1995 contract between the National Science Foundation and Network Solutions. Until recently, the company charged clients $50 a year to register addresses and put 30 per cent of each fee into the fund to be used later to advance networking. Last year, Congress directed NSF to use $23 million from that account to fund its part of its Next Generation Internet expenditures. However, a group of Internet users challenged the fee, charging that it was an illegal tax. Two months ago, NSF was directed to freeze expenditures of the funds until the court decision. It is unclear, now, what impacts, if any, will be felt on NGI programs now that the funds have been ruled illegal. Nor is it clear what the judge will direct NSI to do with the funds now in the account. A spokeswoman for the NSF said that officials were "disappointed" with the decision and were considering an appeal. _________________________________________________________________ MILLENNIUM EVENING AT THE WHITE HOUSE APRIL 22; PUBLIC PARTICIPATION ENCOURAGED According to a White House press release, the President and Mrs. Clinton have announced that the next Millennium Evening will be a celebration of American creativity through poetry featuring Poets Laureate Robert Pinsky, Robert Hass and Rita Dove and will take place in the East Room of the White House on Wednesday, April 22 at 7:30 p.m. The Poets Laureate, along with President and Mrs. Clinton and members of the audience, will read poems they have selected as particularly illustrative of the American voice in poetry. Millennium Evenings at the White House are a series of lectures and cultural showcases that highlight creativity and inventiveness through ideas, art and scientific discoveries. The lectures present prominent scholars, creators and visionaries and are accessible to the public via broadcast and cybercast. The President and Mrs. Clinton encourage the public to participate in the evening's discussion by e-mailing questions for the three poets laureate or sending a favorite poem with comments, either before or during the cybercast. These may be sent via the White House Web site (http://www.whitehouse.gov) several days before the event. The Web site will also post satellite coordinates (on C and KU bands) and serve as a link to the cybercast. It will also be available via the Web page of Sun Microsystems(http://www.sun.com). The Millennium Evening is co-sponsored by the White House, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Library of Congress with major support from Sun Microsystems, Inc. and further support from the Howard Gilman Foundation. The first Millennium Evening was held February 11, 1998, with Harvard historian Bernard Bailyn lecturing on core Americans ideas which must be preserved into the next Millennium. On March 6, 1998, Cambridge University physicist Stephen Hawking discussed "Imagination and Change: Science in the Next Millennium." Transcripts are available on the White House web site at http://www.whitehouse.gov. _________________________________________________________________ ALAWON is a free, irregular publication of the American Library Association Washington Office. To subscribe, send the message: subscribe ala-wo [your_firstname] [your_lastname] to listproc @ala.org. To unsubscribe, send the message: unsubscribe ala-wo to listproc@ala.org. ALAWON archives at http://www.ala.org/ washoff/alawon. Visit our Web site at http://www.alawash.org. ALA Washington Office 202.628.8410 (V) 1301 Pennsylvania Ave., NW, #403 202.628.8419 (F) Washington, DC 20004-1701 800.941.8478 (V) Lynne E. Bradley, Editor Deirdre Herman, Managing Editor Contributors: Rick Weingarten All materials subject to copyright by the American Library Association may be reprinted or redistributed for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credits. =================================================================