An expensive New York court battle has resulted in little success for the South African government in trying to secure ownership of the Internet domain name www.southafrica.com.
Deputy Minister of Communication Roy Padayachee told parliament on Wednesday that even though about R1-million had been spent on legal costs in an attempt to wrest ownership of the domain away from American company Virtual Countries, the court action had only been successful "to some extent".
Answering questions in the national assembly, he said: "We were not successful in transferring the ownership of www.southafrica.com to South Africa but we were successful in ensuring that Virtual Countries can no longer transfer this domain name to any other company or any other individual.
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"But we still have the problem of securing ownership."
'We still have the problem of securing ownership' Virtual Countries had registered the domain name in 1995 for about $35 (about R230). Padayachee said the company was requesting between $5-million (about R32-million) and $10-million (about R65-million) from South Africa to buy the domain name.
He said the government was trying to negotiate a "more realistic" price. "It is our view that in time the value of this particular name will diminish and it may then be possible for South Africa to negotiate the purchase of this name in its own right."
The deputy minister said the worldwide Internet regulator, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, would be visiting the country in December to transfer the domain name www.southafrica.za to the state.
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This article was originally published on page 6 of Cape Argus on September 16, 2004
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