Internet expert pessimistic about Niue's domain case

Transcript

KEITH DAVIDSON: Initially, the operator applied and the government of Niue said no, they didn't want .nu. And they were quite happy for the operator to take the delegation. I believe there is a memorandum of understanding between that initial operator and the government of Niue. And part of the responsibilities of giving back to the local community was the provision of a largely free internet service for the island of Niue. And given the very expensive satellite connections that are used to connect the tiny populations in Niue, I would say probably a considerable amount of the revenue has been consumed and attending to the needs of the local internet community in a rather novel way. There were claims several years ago that Niue was the first free internet provider country in the world, which was quite a claim.

MACKENZIE SMITH: Do you think Niue has much of a case here, then?

KD: What I've seen in this case is there's an attempt to sue the registry operator in Sweden, and I don't think that that will be likely to be successful. In fact, I'd be surprised if the case actually goes to court given the jurisdiction of the issues around Niue are the self-governing state of Niue and not Sweden. And the issue is who is the delegated manager for the country code, not who operates the database at the registry level.

MS: Every few years it seems that a small island state in the Pacific makes some headlines around its domain name. Are these ongoing issues?

KD: There have been a number of ongoing issues that are unique country by country, but looking around our neighbourhood in the South Pacific, there are 12 smaller nations other than Australia and New Zealand, and I notice that seven of them are run by the government, two are run by universities in-country, two are run by the telecommunications provider in-country and then the odd one out is Niue which is run outside of the country. So, given that the government own universities as a rule too, and usually have quite strong influence over the telecommunications providers, it seems to me that governments are in good position to pass policies and processes for their own cc TLDs in each of the other instances. I know there have been debates over Tuvalu, which is .tv, and Tokelau, .tk, on various other aspects of how the cc TLD is operated, but given that the government controls the cc TLD and is the delegated manager in those two instances, this seems to me to be a domestic issue that they need to resolve themselves.