"VeriSign will take over control of the .tv Web domain by buying .tv Corp. International for $45 million cash, the company announced Monday.
VeriSign operates the registry for Internet addresses that end with the suffixes .com, .net and .org, handling the database where the names and subscriptions are stored. The .com, .net and .org suffixes of Web addresses are known as "top-level domains." The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers recently added seven new suffixes--.museum, .biz, .info, .aero, .name, .coop and .pro.
But each country also has its own top-level domain (.us for the United States, for example). The .tv domain is actually the country code for the South Pacific island nation of Tuvalu. Tuvalu licensed the domain to .tv Corp. in 2000 for $50 million, using part of that money to join the United Nations.
.tv Corp., which will become a wholly owned subsidiary of VeriSign, will continue to be the country manager of the government of Tuvalu for .tv extensions."
Thanks for the replies but I have not be able to find out when the license with Tuvalu expires.
Was it a ten year license? If so, they will have to renegotiate in 2010 and who knows what will happen then. Maybe Tuvalu will want its name back and take back all .tv domains.
Probably won't happen but I think ALL .tv players need to know if their domains can be taken away in the future.
i believe i saw this somewhere and it is longer than 10 years.
I am not too worried about Tuvalu, the country. Given how effectively Verisign manhandles ICAAN on .com contract, I am pretty sure they are not going to get pushed around by Tuvalu on the .tv contract.
Also, even thought ICAAN does not directly set the terms for ccTLDs, they have to approve a change of manager and one factor in that is potential disruption to existing registrants
Okay but people are investing tens of millions of dollars collectively on .tv and no one knows if they entire extension might be taken away.
In 1959 Fidel Castro took over Cuba and nationalized all the business. What if some dictator took over Tuvalu and demanded the .tv domain back, held it for ransom or did not renew the license.
Goodbye .tv and no one will have seen it coming.
I'm not calling for the end of the world here but I think we owe it to ourselves to get an answer.
I guess if Demand Media paid any attention to these threads at Namepros then they might be able to answer it for us.
ICANN has to approve changes in country managers for ccTLDs so extremely disruptive behavior as you describe it (e.g. change of manager without allowing existing registrants to continue on the same terms as before) is unlikely to get approved. The only changes in managers happened a few years ago with very minor ccTlds that had basically no end-users at the time.
.tv is long past that point where ICANN can allow huge disruptions. Unlike the Cuba example, unless the Tuvalu dictator can get into the worldwide root servers, he/she has no way to force this change if ICANN disagrees with him/her.
So then we have to ask ourselves who has more lobbying power with ICANN?
1. On one side you have a country so poor that before the .tv deal they could not afford to join the UN.
2. On the other side, you have a multibillion firm (Verisign) that has ICANN more or less in its pocket as evidenced by the terms of the .com agreement plus now a bunch of additional large corps (e.g. MTV) using the extension. So that is going to be a lot of legal, financial and lobbying firepower pointed against Tuvalu in such a situation.
Look, anything is possible and I am paranoid, but in the scheme of things that I worry about with .tv, this one does not keep me up at night.
imho even if they do re-negotiate, the Gov't of Tuvalu is not likely to do anything to kill the golden goose. Although I do think they will want a deal with a larger share of the profits than they have now.
here is the article:
February 9, 2007
Minisiter of Communications Transport to Verisign
By Silafaga Lalua
The Minister of Transport and Communications Hon. Taukelina Finekaso has come back to the country this week after attending a 3 day meeting with Verisign in Washington, USA.
Verisign, the company that runs the dot TV domain, invited the minister and Secretary Tapugao Falefou to the United States to see its operation.
They talked on the agreement with Tuvalu, how they can get more money for Tuvalu, the Verisign opportunity for government Information, Computing and Technology ICT department staff, and the possibility of operating a mirror registry in Tuvalu.
Finekaso stated this is the 6th year of the 15 year agreement that the government signed with Verisign in 2000.
Tuvalu has received 2.2 million US dollars in the first five years of the agreement. From this 6th year onward, Tuvalu will receive 2 million US dollars.
Under the same agreement, it was settled that if Verisign acquires revenue of more than 5 million US dollars after every quarter, 5 percent will be Tuvalu’s.
Because it hasn’t reached that goal in the past 5 years, the 5 % has not been paid to Tuvalu yet.
Minister stated that the agreement cannot be re-negotiated.
There was an upfront payment of 25 million dollars paid to the government, and the total amount paid to Tuvalu has not being recovered by Verisign up to date.
Verisign still looks for ways to increase its revenue so Tuvalu can also benefit.
The trip to the USA was fully sponsored by Verisign and Hon. Finekaso arrived in the country yesterday.
Yeah but Verisign is the one we probably have to watch out for. They just raised the price of .com domains by 7% so a .tv price increase could probably come at any time.
Rogor,
Thank you for finding this. At least we should be okay till 2015, with regards to Tuvalu anyway.
Its a risk we all take registering any CCTLD outside of a few countries (ca, uk, us, etc). There is a chance you could lose everything, but would it happen? No. If ICANN doesn't receive payment from Tuvalu or something, than ICANN will probably remake .tv as meaning .television. I'm not 100% if they can do that but thats what I figure will happen. This income is beneficial to Tuvalu's economy and they should accept this and build off on it and try and promote .tv extension as much as they can to make the most money out of it.
Like the saying goes.. Don't bite the hand that feeds you.
