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| SA negotiates for southafrica.com |
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| BY STEPHEN WHITFORD, ITWEB JOURNALIST |
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| [Johannesburg, 6 May 2003] -
Government is negotiating to buy the Internet address www.southafrica.com from US company Virtual Countries to ensure SA is marketed correctly to the rest of the world.Envir Fraser, senior e-commerce manager at the Department of Communications, says the main reason for the battle to acquire the site is one of credibility.“There is no guarantee that SA will be represented properly by a company from another country. We are seeking to buy the address to ensure the country is marketed correctly to the international community.“We are therefore seeking to gain control of the site so that we can link it to the International Marketing Council of South Africa's Web site [www.saafrica.info], which markets SA to the rest of the world.”Negotiations for southafrica.com began after government approached the World Organisation for Intellectual Property (Wipo) in a bid to acquire the site, which was registered by Virtual Countries in 1995.Virtual Countries responded by trying to prevent SA from taking the matter to Wipo. A legal battle ensued in New York and Virtual Countries lost both the case and the appeal, with the US court ruling late last year that SA had the right to seek ownership of the Internet address through Wipo.Fraser says although the Wipo 2 report recommended that countries' names should not be registered as Internet addresses in future unless the country has some say in the matter, the report is not retrospective and therefore countries which have already had their names registered are forced to negotiate to acquire them back.Government then continued with its attempts to acquire the address, following which negotiations with Virtual Counties began.Fraser would not comment on the amount that government would pay for the Internet address as he said it would undermine negotiations. He did, however, say there was no truth in the figure of $10 million to $15 million quoted in media reports.New Zealand recently paid NZ$1 million (R4.2 million) to acquire newzealand.com from Virtual Countries.
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