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The Internet Your Rights Online

South Africa Wants SouthAfrica.com 14

Posted by michael from the old-story,-new-twist dept.
Nick writes "An American businessman will have to go to the UN to defend his right to the URL southafrica.com, as the South African government says it has a right to the domain. Story here. The owner says it is a free speech issue and that he won't be censored."
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South Africa Wants SouthAfrica.com More

South Africa Wants SouthAfrica.com

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  • Hurrah (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I strongly support this brave man. His case could set an important precedence that will heavily affect the ruling of my firstpost.com case.
  • This is a case where, unless misreported, this guy is clearly within his rights as the original domain holder to hold on to his domain: he's not abusing it, nor trying to sell it, and it actually is a commercial venture earning the .com TLD. And as the article points out, new TLDs will be appropriate for what SA wants to do with the site (a travel-info site).

    However, WIPO has ruled in the past for "famous name" people, such as Madonna, etc. If this case was basically equal save for the name "South Africa" instead of a celebrity, I would think WIPO would rule in favor of SA. The key difference, however, is that the guy, according to the report, has never attempted to sell the domain, thus he's not 'squatting' as those other cases turned out to be. Again, reasonably, it's in the current holder's favor, but WIPO is very unpredictable; this could easily go either way.

  • doesn't ANYBODY understand the MEANING of TLD's? (Score:4)

    by ChristTrekker ( 91442 ) on Friday November 03, 2000 @05:34AM (#653619)

    South Africa already has a domain, a TLD even, that it's fully in control of: .ZA. If somebody's running a business with a legitimate claim to the name "South Africa" no one should be able to touch him.

    TLD's need to be meaningful and enforceable. I almost wish the gTLD's would go away in favor of ccTLD's for everybody, including the US. Let your own country deal with disputes in your own courts. These international hassles are a needless pain in the butt.

  • Let the South African Government [www.gov.za] know that you object to their move. Head to their feedback [www.gov.za] page and share your opinion. I suggest mentioning that you plan to boycott (travel-wise, that is) until they withdraw their claim to the domain southafrica.com.

    Some day I hope to have a .plan.
  • Let me state, for the record, that I hate reverse domain name highjacking. I was actively involved in the etoy fight and I strongly believe that no trademark holder should have a right to sucks-domain names. (Yeah fuckatt.com can sure be confused with the intelectual property of a large, clueless phone company).

    This case however could be looked at from two sides: Either the original intention of the crafters of the domain name system is maintained, no exceptions or then trademark (by registration or by virtue) and domain issues are intermingled. The first will never happen. I'm not saying this a good thing, it's the way it is.

    I'm not sure if the guy registered the name with bad intention and probably the SA tourist board is a dollar short and a day late.

    Nevertheless they do appear to have a legitimate claim for the domain name. The free speach issue argument in this case looks to me like utter bullshit.

    There are a lot of domain name issues that seem a hell of a lot murkier. E.g. Should the Zurich insurance group have the right to the zurich.com domain (which they own) or should the fine city of Zurich be able to get the name?

    Ok, so hate me if you will, but that case looks fairly clear cut, despite all the whining of the guy.

  • "There are a lot of domain name issues that seem a hell of a lot murkier. E.g. Should the Zurich insurance group have the right to the zurich.com domain (which they own) or should the fine city of Zurich be able to get the name?"

    Is that Zurich, Switzerland, or Zurich, Illinois?

  • There's also a Zurich in Holland :>

    Let the domain name fights roll in...

  • Check this out, I don't know why they think they're
    automatically entitled to it, when the U.S. doesn't even own
    USA.com.

    Earl

    > $ whois -h whois.networksolutions.com usa.com
    >
    > Registrant:
    > Mail.com, Inc. (USA112-DOM)
    > 11 Broadway, Suite 660
    > New York, NY 10004
    > US
    >
    > Domain Name: USA.COM
    >
    > Administrative Contact:
    > Technical Contact, Zone Contact:
    > Billing Contact:
    > DNS Administration (DA9332-ORG) dnsbilling@INAMECORP.COM
    > iName, Inc.
    > 11 Broadway, Suite 660
    > New York, NY 10004
    > US
    > 212-425-3477
    > Fax- - 212-425-3487
    >
    > Record last updated on 06-Jul-2000.
    > Record expires on 02-Feb-2003.
    > Record created on 02-Feb-1999.
    > Database last updated on 31-Oct-2000 06:29:44 EST.
    >
    > Domain servers in listed order:
    >
    > NS1.MAIL.COM 165.251.1.2
    > NS2.MAIL.COM 165.251.1.3

  • If an American businessman running an American business, then let him use the ".us" domain. Since when do Americans get more right to ".com" than anybody else?

  • Sure, south africa could use the ".co.za" .. but lets face it, that is NOT going to draw many hits, is it, particularly since SA wants ".com" so that it can market SA tourism INTERNATIONALLY -> how many Americans (for example) wishing to visit south africa would type in "southafrica.co.za"? You can be damn sure that they're going to type in "southafrica.com", which is exactly why this domain is so valuable, and it's exactly why the current owner would not want to move. Sure, it sucks that web surfers only think about ".com", but thats they way things are. If we start forcing other countries to stick to their own tld's, then we should start forcing the USA to stick to it's TLD, and the global ".com" TLD's should maybe be used for companies with definitely international markets (eg tourism interests). If the SA government used ".za", then pretty much only south africans would ever type that name in, which would be fscking pointless since they want to attract people from everywhere BUT south africa.

    If well-known companies and well-known people already have "more" right to domain names under previous rulings, why not country names as well?

    Who knows all the country TLD's anyway? I would have guessed south africa would be ".sa". And if I decided I wanted to visit Uzbekhistan, I sure as hell wouldn't know what their TLD might be.

  • <p>This is purely a money issue. As far as attracting people interested in south africa goes, southafrica.com is <b>by far</b> more valuable than any other domain name. This has <i>absolutely zero, zip, nothing, void, bugger-all</i> to do with censorship.

    <p>Both him and the SA government, it seems, want to use the domain for commercial purposes, so in general I think he is entitled to it purely because 'he got there first'. Although then why should famous people be more entitled to domain names of their names if other people got there first?

  • He had it first, South Africa could have gotten it first and it would have been fair game. As to .us, it does exist, but it is so mismanaged as to make it unusable. I wish it wern't because I think it would be cool to have domains based on regions (ie jordanb.il.us).

  • Damn right! When I can levy taxes and throw people in jail, then South Africa and I will both belong in the same TLD -- not before.

  • You've described exactly why gTLD's are such a stupid idea. Everybody wants them. And since they are by their very nature international, who adjudicates disputes? Anyone? Anyone? What a mess.

    The solution, as I alluded to, is to go to ccTLD's for everyone...yes, including the US. Let your own nation's courts handle name disputes in their own fashion with their own applicable laws. If you're truly international, .int is for you. But if you take a .int domain you have to agree to have disputes settled by an international agency in charge of such things instead of your own courts.

    "But the internet is about transcending political borders!" B.S. We still live in meatspace, where politics is very real. These problems need to be referred to where they're supposed to go. Companies and individuals have to live by the laws of their own countries.

    "But how will we be able to find anything?" New browsers could be written to look up requests to foo.com against all foo.com.<ccTLD> possibilities and return a list of matches. Browsers already take the 2LD as a keyword, slapping a www. and .com around it. This wouldn't be that hard. Existing browsers would, of course, need the full domain name...which isn't much different than needing to know the full name currently if it's not a .com.

    "But every country is going to do something different in their own hierarchy!" Yeah, that could be a pain. So standardize these new 2LD's: .com for businesses that don't have a more specific one like .net (and more of these should be created, like .bank that was proposed once), .org, .web, .gov, etc. (Bet they look familiar, huh?)

    "What about trademark disputes?" Forbid them if they're frivolous. If Coke gets cocacola.food.us and coke.food.us (both trademarks) then they've done their job of protecting their trademark. (Here .food is a hypothetical specialty domain the same way I see .net.) If a Cocaine Anonymous wants coke.org.us that's fine. If some steel manufacturer wants coke.manuf.us that's fine too. The name makes it obvious they're not in the same trademark space! This is what the domain name hierarchy ought to do: make it clear what you're resources you're getting. OTOH, if someone tried to register coca-cola.food.us then Coke would have a legitimate complaint.

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