A LETTER came across my desk last month that reminds me that little has changed in the way the Philippine Internet domain is managed.
In the letter dated Dec. 20, 2011, the official Philippine domain registry, DotPH, told a giant retail chain that it would find itself temporarily homeless on the Internet if it didn’t agree to drop its current domain name, which is disallowed under current rules.
The letter sounded reasonable enough. In it, DotPH spokesman Emil Avancena acknowledged that his company had erred when it allowed the retail giant to register its two-letter domain name in November 1999, despite a policy prohibiting the registration of such PH domains.
“Over the past several weeks, we have had extensive discussions with you during which we have offered a variety of solutions in exchange for relinquishing the domain voluntarily,” Avancena said in his letter to the the retail company’s vice president for information technology.
DotPH offered to replace the two-letter domain with other available domains for which no renewal fees need be paid for the next 20 years, and the paying of a $1,500 filing fee with the World Intellectual Property Organization on the company’s behalf, and assistance in minimizing any disruption that might be caused by giving up the domain name. The company also offered to refund the retail firm’s $70 domain registration fee.
“All our proposals were rejected and we feel we have exhausted all avenues for settlement of this issue. We even requested a meeting to discuss in detail what disruptions might occur and how we could help, but our request for a meeting was also denied.
“We have no other alternative than to inform you that on Jan. 6, 2012, the domain… will be deleted from our database and will no longer resolve,” Avancena said.
The letter clearly stunned the retail company’s VP for IT.
“Nowhere in our discussions was it suggested that the domain was to be unilaterally deleted… I’m just disgusted,” he said in an e-mail message.
“I told them that giving up the domain is not trivial because we have many systems that use it — such as Lotus Notes and our entire Microsoft Platform, from Active Directory, Exchange, to Sharepoint and Lync both in the Philippines and in our China offices,” he continued. “Furthermore, the domain is programmed in hundreds, if not thousand of mobile devices such as phones and iPads that our users use to sync their e-mail and calendar.”
Since then, both sides have apparently returned to the negotiating table – and the domain name remains active, for now. Still, the fact that DotPH could threaten unilateral cancellation of a company’s domain suggests much still needs to be done to reform the way it manages the Philippine domain.
Some years ago, I wrote in support of domain reforms, noting that the privately owned DotPH treats the Philippine domain―arguably a shared, public resource–as a private asset, with little accountability to the people or their representatives. As far as I can tell, the company needs no congressional franchise to operate, even though it provides a public service as a monopoly (it’s the only company that can register PH domain names). The company continues to charge for PH registration in US dollars―though it will apparently accept the equivalent in pesos, and it sets its own prices with no interference from any regulatory body.
Today, you will still be hard-pressed to get DotPH to acknowledge two basic tenets: 1) That the PH domain is a public resource to be managed in trust for the local Internet community; and 2) That the administrator must consult with and be answerable to the community at large before making decisions that affect all stakeholders.
But really, how hard is it to understand “public resource” in the same way that airwaves, the waterways and air lanes are public resources that are owned by everyone in the country?
