Tag Archives: internet governance

Masters of our own Domain

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been working on contract to assist the Interim Telecommunications Regulator in conducting a consultation seeking public input on how best to manage Vanuatu’s .vu domain in a pluralistic, healthy commercial ISP market.

A fair amount of technical information necessarily goes into such discussions, and you can read more about that on the Regulator’s website.

The issue of managing Vanuatu’s national domain affects us all. It’s not sufficient for a bunch of geeks to get together and decide everything; we need to make sure everyone in Vanuatu has a clear idea what’s happening.

To that end, I’ve dug through a number of older columns on the subject of what a domain is, how it should work, and what it all means to Internet users in Vanuatu.

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What's in a Name?

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

A colleague recently sent me a link to a story originating from Ireland, in which the national domain administrator refused to allow the registration of certain terms. I’ll let the author of the original article explain:

‘I’ve been trying to register the domains porn.ie and pornography.ie for about four years. Every time I try to register either domain, the Irish Domain Registry (IEDR) refuse my application because “the proposed domain name must not be offensive or contrary to public policy or generally accepted principles of morality.”’

(For reference, ‘.ie’ is the two letter domain name (properly called a country code Top Level Domain, or ccTLD) that that signifies Ireland. Vanuatu’s ccTLD is ‘.vu’.)

The writer continues: “I found myself a solicitor who specialises in digital law (e.g. cases involving the Internet) and arranged an appeal against the refusal of registration.”

Eventually, a court found that there was nothing inherently offensive about the domain names, but to the author’s astonishment, it still found against him. The rationale? The court had no mandate to intervene with the actions of the domain administrator. The body managing Ireland’s ccTLD is a purpose-built non-profit organisation, and though the Irish government has reserved the right to take control of the ccTLD, they haven’t exercised it. In all likelihood, they wouldn’t, except in an emergency.

Vanuatu is currently taking a look at how its ccTLD will be managed in the future, so it’s worth taking a few moments to consider what we would do in the same situation.

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Safeguarding the Internet Commons

[This week’s Communications column for the Vanuatu Independent.]

On January 5th, the Sydney Morning Herald published a story titled, “Dial X for Optus.” The feature recounted the story, by now well known in Vanuatu, of how Optus collaborated with certain Pacific Islands nations to make tens of millions of dollars in profit from the pornography industry.

“The scheme,” wrote Vanda Carson, “allowed the telcos to bill customers premium rates for sexually explicit calls or X-rated downloads when they dialled the country codes” of many Pacific nations, Vanuatu included. “Optus was part of the partnership of telcos which acted as gatekeepers in the porn trade between the US and Europe and small Pacific islands.”

As if that wasn’t bad enough, Optus illegally appropriated 100 Vanuatu telephone numbers and kept all revenues generated by them.

None of that could happen today. With the creation of a functioning and effective Telecommunications Regulator, we now have proper oversight on how Vanuatu’s communications resources are used. The government of Vanuatu has made great strides in ensuring that all telephone operators manage their systems responsibly and efficiently.

Now we need to do the same for our Internet resources.

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