IN JOURNALISM, running stories are those that last a long time. From time to time, they come back into the limelight then disappear again till the next major development.
In the IT industry, two such stories resurfaced this month, reminding us that there’s still some unsettled business in cyberspace. Both deal with issues that may seem obscure to the average Web surfer, but each is significant in its own way.
The first of these is the David and Goliath story of Gerry Kaimo, the eccentric owner of the PLDT.com website, versus the multi-billion-peso phone company, the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Co. (PLDT).
Most of us first learned about this story from the PH-Cyberview mailing list.
On September 22, 1999, list subscribers got this flash report from its moderator, Jim Ayson.
Newsflash! Big telco sues individual website owner over free speech issue! PLDT slaps lawsuit on PLDT.com!
I received the following message this morning from Gerry Kaimo:
At 02:10 PM 9/23/99 +0800, Gerry wrote:
This morning I received a subpoena from the RTC QC.
PLDT seeks a TRO and filing multimillion-peso lawsuit against myself and PLDTi. Just wondering, would this have anything to do with the pages I ran covering the August 20 rally, Indonesia/East Timor, Erap, etc? This can be one of two things—a corporate problem (trademark infringement), which they want to portray as the main reason?or, another anti-government site that is being gagged. Just letting you know what?s coming down here.
– Gerry
As it turned out, PLDT sued Kaimo and the consumer group Philippine League of Democratic Telecommunications Inc. (PLDTi) for P1.35 million for trademark violation over the http://www.pldt.com domain.
Beating PLDT to the punch, Kaimo had registered that name with the US-based Network Solutions Inc. (NSI) and built a satirical website on it that attacked what he viewed as PLDT’s poor service and monopolistic behavior. The website also took swipes at then President Joseph Estrada and other political and business figures.
While PLDT charged him with trademark infringement, Kaimo portrayed the case as a battle for free speech.
Late last month, after more than four years in court, Kaimo won the first round. Quezon City Makati Regional Trial Court Judge Reynaldo Daway rejected a PLDT request for a preliminary injunction that would have shut down the PLDT.com website while the case was being decided.
Over the last four years, Kaimo says, he’s spent at least P300,000 on attorneys fees and submitted a “waist-high” mountain of documentary evidence.
PLDT may yet appeal the case, but for now, Kaimo is savoring the victory. “It was worth it. I would do it all over again,” he says. He also says the case shows “the Internet is a weapon that can be used—and that a monopoly cannot shut one person up.”
Are there other lessons that might be drawn from the PLDT.com case? A few spring to mind.
First, it’s prudent to talk before shooting. As an observer, I’ve always been puzzled that PLDT never tried to talk to Kaimo before it sued him. Who knows what would have happened if they had?
Second, know what you’re doing. From the outset, PLDT seemed to be out of its element. How else can you explain its failure to register the domain name in the first place? In court, PLDT’s own witness failed to distinguish between NSI, which handles registration for top-level domains, and DotPH, the registrar for the PH domain. He also claimed that Kaimo, in registering the name in July 1998, had deprived PLDT of its right to do so, leading it to settle for http://www.pldt.com.ph. But records showed that PLDT had registered its PH domain in March 1996, two years before it was supposed to have “settled” for it.
Domain game
The second running story is the debate over how the PH domain is managed. This story begins in 1989, when Joel Disini successfully applied to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to become the administrator of the PH country code domain. Over the next 10 years, Disini served as administrator, registering and selling domains with the PH country code. In 1999, the registry was later passed on to DotPH, a private company that Disini owns.
In the last 15 years, Disini ran the domain without much public accountability, charging first only P900 for lifetime registration, then raising the cost to $35 a year in the late 1990s.
In 2001, a group of Internet users who felt they should have a say in how the domain is managed, campaigned to transfer the registry to a private foundation that would be more representative of the Philippine online community.
Calling themselves the Philippine Domain Authority Conveners (PhilDAC), they brought their case to the Information Technology and E-Commerce Council (ITECC), the country’s highest IT policy-making body.
In various ITECC committees, debate on the issue waxed and waned, and finally disappeared from our radar screens. Then in August 2003, Malacanang announced the creation of an advisory body—made up of representatives from the private sector, government, and the academic community—that would assist the National Telecommunications Commission on matters and issues related to PH domain.
In February 2004, the advisory body released draft guidelines for the PH domain that show the tide may finally be turning in favor of some form of accountability.
Significantly, the guidelines adopt the principle that the PH domain is a public resource and part of the Philippine national patrimony, and that the state has the sovereign right over Internet-related public policy issues.
The guidelines also clearly state that the administrator is the trustee of the PH domain and is accountable to the local Internet community.
DotPH doesn’t agree with these views and will probably resist the guidelines every step of the way when public hearings on them open today. This is one running story that seems ready to heat up again.
