Viva southafrica.com

Johannesburg, 27 May 2003

A petition has been launched in support of SA`s attempt to acquire the domain name southafrica.com from US company, Virtual Countries.

The petition was launched by Sunday Times journalist Elan Lohmann in support of the government, which is negotiating with Virtual Countries in an attempt to acquire the name.

"We launched the petition on Sunday in a bid to stir some patriotism around the subject and to combat apathy."

Lohmann says once he has collected enough names, he will send the petition to the World Intellectual Property Organisation (Wipo).

Negotiations for southafrica.com began after government approached Wipo. Virtual Countries responded by trying to prevent SA from taking the matter to the organisation. 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.

Although the Wipo 2 report recommends 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 that have already had their names registered are forced to negotiate to acquire them back.

If government is successful in its bid, the domain name will direct users to government`s current site http://www.safrica.info, which promotes the country to the international community.

Lohmann says although only 154 people have signed the online petition so far, he hopes that as awareness about the petition increases, more people will support the country`s bid to acquire the domain name.

"A Web site address is the foundation of effective online branding. Many foreigners aren`t aware of the co.za domain name and would therefore naturally go to southafrica.com. Having an address that is not intuitive is asking for millions in marketing costs, hence the importance in trying to acquire it."

The petition can be found here.