A wrangle between domain name authority Uniforum, a subsidiary of JSE-listed Core Holdings and a non-profit Web hosting business known as Kleva has resulted in a shift in ownership of the yahoo.co.za domain.
Internet Strategies, the Core Holdings subsidiary, holds the exclusive representation rights for Yahoo! Incorporated in sub-Saharan Africa, including SA. This covers all Yahoo! sites, including the recently acquired Geocities and Broadcast.com. For local and international marketing, the Yahoo! network reaches across the entire Internet demographic.
According to Uniforum policy introduced towards late 1998, domain owners must pay an annual renewal fee of R50. Notices of payments due are sent via e-mail to the domain owners.
Core Holdings CEO Mark Floisand believes Uniforum`s automated back-end systems could be to blame for what he calls "an administrative error that will be rectified". Floisand says Core has already met with Uniforum, and is confident that ownership of the domain will revert back to Internet Strategies.
Kevin Caine, manager of the Kleva organisation, registered the domain on behalf of a non-profit organisation known as Young Adults Helping Others Out (Yahoo). The organisation, which differentiates itself from the more widely recognised "Yahoo! Incorporated", has to date provided a basic information service using telephone and fax platforms. The operation has been around since 1989, and assists Round Table clubs, Lions clubs, Rotary clubs, Rotaract clubs, Interact clubs, schools, charities and community organisations in sourcing additional resources for specific upliftment projects.
In an effort to speed up the organisation`s day-to-day business, it decided to go online. But as Caine points out, the .org domain in which Yahoo rightly belongs is already taken by a private individual. "It shouldn`t be on .co.za, but there`s no other choice."
Up until now, Yahoo has been operating through a sub-domain of the kleva.org Web site, but Caine says that when the .co.za domain became available, he wasn`t taking the chance that someone else might get it before he did. Caine registered the domain on the morning of Sunday, 25 February.
But he points out that there is no intent to steal Yahoo!`s thunder; visitors to yahoo.co.za are faced with a large Yahoo! logo, which they can click through to get to the portal if that was their intended destination.
Caine says he hasn`t yet been contacted by Core Holdings.
"To be honest, if [Core Holdings] wants the domain returned, we can`t afford to get into a legal battle, so we would have to relinquish it. We would definitely expect some form of compensation, and we`d expect them to organise a .org domain for Yahoo to continue its online operations."
Calvin Browne, Uniforum financial director, says the organisation is in the process of investigating the issue. "The domain name was deleted as per our standard deletion policies; it was suspended for a three-month period, then deleted and published for everyone to see. Core Holdings is investigating whether there was any mistake made in updating details on our side. Documentation is being gathered, and we haven`t seen anything untoward so far.
"We`ve pooled all our information, and we believe it was a valid domain deletion. We can`t see any indication that they paid for that domain, though we have received payment from them for other domains. We`re waiting for them to pass their information on."
Browne adds that Uniforum processes a few hundred domain registrations per day, and acknowledges the possibility that one could have slipped through. But for the moment, he says, there aren`t any mistakes apparent.
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