The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers -- a nonprofit concern created to relieve the federal government of the task of dispensing Web addresses -- has been anything but master of its own domain names.

After three years of planning, haggling and negotiations by government officials, computer geeks and private businesses, ICANN was supposed to break Network Solutions Inc.'s monopoly for registering domain names ending in .com, .net and .org. Beginning in late June, ICANN was to delegate naming rights to America Online, France Telecom and three other high-tech companies.

At least that was the plan as of a month ago, before infighting delayed the plan until at least July 16. Now, there is a power struggle between NSI, which appears reluctant to relinquish control, and ICANN, which has drawn accusations of making major policy decisions behind closed doors.

``It is a mess,'' acknowledged Christopher Clough, a spokesman for NSI in Herndon, Va.

Everyone from consumer advocate Ralph Nader to the ultra-conservative Americans for Tax Reform have taken pot shots at the arrangement, and many are singling out ICANN.

``ICANN is a mushy, disorganized hodgepodge of an organization,'' said Naseem Javed, president of ABC Namebank International, a brand-name consulting company in New York and frequent critic of ICANN.

``It doesn't seem to have the proper hierarchy or people,'' Javed said. ``Basically, it's a team of 10 people responsible for assigning 10,000 names a day. At $70 per name, that's a multimillion-dollar business.''

Politicians, meanwhile, are distressed by ICANN's secrecy that led to such decisions as imposing a $1 per domain name registration fee for administrative use. That backroom decision would create within a year a $5.9 million fund for ICANN. (The previous group in charge of administering domain names, IANA, had an annual budget of $500,000.)

``Such decisions likely exceed the authority that (the government) originally contemplated for ICANN,'' U.S. Rep. Thomas Bliley Jr., R-Va., said in a scathing June 22 letter to ICANN Chairman Esther Dyson. ``Rather than promote the Internet's evolution, your organization's policies actually may jeopardize'' its growth.

There are even rumblings inside the Beltway that Congress will conduct hearings on ICANN and call Dyson to testify, sources said.  Compounding matters, hackers broke into ICANN's computer servers for several hours Friday, diverting traffic from its Web site to competitors.

But ICANN's harshest detractor is NSI -- which, of course, has its own ax to grind.

``It is disturbing that ICANN is making major policy decisions behind closed-door meetings,'' Clough said.  Some might argue that Clough is describing his own company. NSI, benefiting from a federal contract and boasting a board sprinkled with military-industrial types, is worth nearly $3 billion.

In a phone interview from London, Dyson admitted that ICANN made mistakes but said it has improved. The Los Angeles group holds public hearings before its quarterly board meetings and posts the text of its resolutions online (www.icann.org). It also is hammering out a plan to select new board members.

Dyson dismisses ICANN's critics as NSI mouthpieces who are part of a scheme to gum up the transition of power. She said furor over the $1 fee, for example, is their most outlandish gripe.

``If you use a national park, there is a $1 fee; if you use the Internet, there should be a $1 fee,'' Dyson said. ``It is a minimal tax but small compared to NSI, which charges $35 per year for registration fees. Despite the acrimony, Dyson clearly is extending the olive branch. ``We would like to work with NSI; it would make everyone's life much simpler, Dyson said. ``We're not trying to create a mess. We really are not the bad guys. We're trying to create competition to a monopoly.'' That, everyone agrees, eventually will benefit consumers. More choices ultimately will result in cheaper registration fees.

``This should be a wake-up call,'' Javed said. ``E-commerce will eventually be a $1 trillion business worldwide, and an organization like ICANN needs to harness it.''

LET THE BIDDING BEGIN: The domain-name business has been good to Alexis Rosen. Rosen recently sold the rights to Mall.com, which he acquired for pocket change in 1992, to an online shopping portal in Austin, Texas, for at least $250,000.

``I didn't really plan to sell it, but I got an incredible offer,'' said Rosen, founder of Panix of New York, one of the first Internet service providers.

Rosen also is one of the lucky cybersquatters. While other individuals have been either sued or vilified by corporations over the rights to Web addresses with trademarked names, Rosen made a small fortune because he bought the rights to a generic title.

``Perhaps I had a foolish notion that the Net was for educational --not commercial -- purposes,'' Rosen said. ``If I was in this for the money, I could have registered several thousand (well-known domain) names and made $500 million.''

For now, he'll settle for a healthy quarter-million dollars.

BIGGER AIN'T BEAUTIFUL: The final chapter in Atbigger.net's Shakespearean tragedy is expected to unfold tomorrow in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in San Jose, and no one will be the richer or wiser.

The Internet service provider charged $60 for unlimited, lifetime online access but went belly up last year with money problems. Some of its assets eventually were bought by another financially strapped ISP, Brigadoon.com.

What's left? About $108,600 in cash, according to a court notice faxed to a conga line of investors, creditors and former Atbigger.net employees last week.

But most of the money -- gasp! -- is going to lawyers and accountants. The law firm that assisted the bankruptcy trustee is pocketing $42,482.12 for its few months of work, while the CPA collects $39,830.14.

If my math is correct (I got a ``B'' in high-school calculus), that leaves a meager $26,287.74 to divvy up among burned investors and creditors, who are owed millions of dollars.

Once they've picked through the leftovers, that leaves Atbigger.net's long-suffering installed base of 25,000 to 40,000 customers with about 1 cent each of free Internet use.

Click it and weep.

The End