What Cyber-Price for a National Identity? - 0 views
started by Rubin Hegelund on 28 May 13
started by Rubin Hegelund on 28 May 13
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The tiny Polynesian island nation of Niue is starting to feel it is been had.
Frankly, it's clear they didn't do their homework before they did their deal.
Ironically penerjemah korea, it seems the buyer hadn't actually completed his, either.
Any person who has been inundated by ads for 'global domains' can simply comprehend that it's a burgeoning organization. The specter of buying a domain at a significantly far better value than the much more common 'dot com' or 'dot net' or 'dot org' is most appealing to most aspiring entrepeneurs on restricted budgets. This niche's industry leader is most most likely Global Domains International (GDI), which has no doubt put Western Samoa on the mental map of numerous a cybernaut. The essential element in that deal is that the Western Samoan government granted the rights to GDI in return for a royalty for each domain sold.
Niue's name is derived from the regional language's phrase for, "Appear, a coconut!" It appears they should have utilised theirs far more completely before signing a domain deal with Bill Semich in 1998.
An American businessman whose former station was editor for a personal computer magazine, Semich recognized the prospective worth in the marketability of special domains. Apparently locating the 'nu' extension an appealing letter mixture, he signed a contract with the Niue government that gave him the exclusive rights to it.
It wasn't a 1-way deal. Semich guaranteed totally free wireless access for all 2000 of Niue's citizens and he delivered, finishing the installation of an island-wide network of translator towers in 2003. The country's leaders surely felt they had offered their citizenry with a service for the new century which would favorably ensconce their spot in island history.
Semich, meanwhile, intended to hawk his bargain domains to Americans. He had no concept that his perfect customers have been in Sweden, where 'nu' is the regional word for 'now.'
Clearly,'now' is a hot advertising and marketing action term in any language, so Semich was pleasantly surprised to uncover the Swedes flocking to his cyber-home. As a translated instance of why this works for them, 'drive.now' (which would be 'kra.nu') is a extremely compelling sales slogan which becomes an perfect URL for a Swedish driving college. To date, Semich has had 110,000 sales of 'dot nu' domains at $30 a year, which has considerably swollen the coffers of his '.NU Domain Ltd' to the extent that its website's home web page default language is now -- or nu --- in Swedish.
In truth, Semich has cleverly taken advantage of this windfall to turn into the 1st domain provider to incorporate a comprehensive Unicode character set into its scripts, allowing users whose alphabets have distinctive characters --- in Swedish, that would be the letters ',' '' and '' --- to remain correct to their language instead of settling for Anglicized versions, which typically destroy their original meaning. His firm has already announced the rollout of this service in Sweden. Offered that Unicode enables linguistic propriety to Japanese, Cyrillic, Spanish, French, German, Arabic and any other script with special characters, Semich has really grow to be a pioneer in his craft.
All this commercial good results has wrought concerns in Niue. Not only is the disparity in monetary advantage an concern, but the island's strongly Christian residents are upset that 'dot nu' has turn into a well-known extension for pornographic web sites. Semich disavows any responsibility for this segment of his clientele, but the fact remains that they are there.
The concern became such a political hot potato that 'neo-colonialism' was a trendy charge in Niue's recent elections. Semich seems shrewd enough to recognize that he's got the higher ground in any bargaining that should be completed to assuage his Pacific partners, so a reasonable resolution will surely be attained.
This situation underscores the all-encompassing scope of cyberspatial commerce and the depth of considerations that both purchaser and seller need to assess ahead of entering into far-reaching agreements. Not even the world's tiniest nation --- and that's remote small blip-in-the-Pacific Niue --- is immune from the effects.
The moral of the story, then, is to count your cyber-coconuts ahead of they are cracked open. They could be worth a lot more than you consider.