Too Much Web, Not Enough Names

They come flooding in at the rate of four thousand a day - new registrations for web site names on the Internet. With the U.S. monopoly of the name game ending soon, CBS News correspondent Allen Pizzey says that the search is on for someone else to manage the Internet address book.

What could the Spice girls, Burger King, and Buckingham Palace possibly have in common? Answer: the Internet. All three, along with many other famous names, were registered as web sites by two young British entrepreneurs who planned to sell them back to their namesakes for up to $40,000 each.

They lost in court, but the case illustrates how the Internet has become an entrepreneurial free-for-all. Logging on with your cappuccino may seem innocuous enough, but the demand is outstripping the net's ability to come up with web site names.

"It's easy to think of it like a telephone system where there is just one telecom company who sits there and decides what to do with their phone numbers, but it's not," said Internet expert Benet Northcote. "You've got hundreds and hundreds of companies and hundreds of millions of users."

Administering so-called "domain names" - designations for web sites - is in the hands of the U.S. government, which wants out of the business.

"Because this is changing so fast...we think there needs to be a private organization...that is coordinating this, rather than to have it be an intergovernmental organization," said U.S. Presidential Internet adviser, Ira Magaziner.

An international conference is being held in Geneva to try to set some policy guidelines. The U.S. wants a plan worked out by the end of September.

There are those who believe cyberspace should be a place where free speech and free enterprise can flourish. That was fine when the Internet was new, experts say. But it has grown so fast, it is turning into Godzilla.

And some users, like Queen Elizabeth, may not be amused at being trampled into a web site.

CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey