
The story of the Slovak national top-level domain - thomasdd
https://medium.com/@Oskar456/stolen-sk-domain-717e070f6735
======
dandare
Unfortunately this story is archetypal for a post communist country like
Slovakia. The state is essentially captured by mafia-like groups and oligarchs
and many public services are irreversibly lost to rogue private companies with
ties to politicians.

~~~
TomMarius
It's not as bad as this comment sounds.

~~~
finchisko
no it's shame. btw i'am Slovakian

~~~
TomMarius
I'm not saying it's perfect, but it's not as corrupt as, let's say, Africa, or
even Eastern Europe is. I'm Czech. :-)

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dep_b
I suddenly felt the urge to visit
[http://astalavista.box.sk](http://astalavista.box.sk) again. Next up:
zombo.com

~~~
Angostura
Just checked. So glad Zombo.com is still there.

~~~
krallja
html5zombo.com also exists, for when your device doesn't support Flash, but
you still need to do anything.

~~~
101km
Don't be limited by browser plugins. The only limit is yourself.

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woliveirajr
I don't understand why the government got a judicial decision, from it's own
legal system, stating that the original company (non-profit) couldn't have
changed its ICANN records when they changed to be a for-profit company. Have
done that back at that time, and everything would be ok.

~~~
rini17
In 90s, law was totally unprepared to handle this kind of issues or anything
related to data or internet. And Slovak court system is very slow and avoids
dealing with many known corruption cases, even today.

~~~
mianos
Also there is some sort of system here where you can pay for a expert witness
who will confirm your story. As a foreigner living here I can't get anyone to
explain it to me with any sense.

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soneca
I'm gladly surprised on how well the brazilian TLD registrar works in
comparison of some private players in other countries like Godaddy, although
lacking some features. It is simple, straightforward, just works.

It is managed by a non-profit with a very diverse board:
[http://www.nic.br/pagina/for-an-increasingly-better-
internet...](http://www.nic.br/pagina/for-an-increasingly-better-internet-in-
brazil/)

I would enjoy to learn about the history of its creation

~~~
gcb0
internet in Brazil started early with universities.

the br domain was introduced in 89 and handled by the same organization that
handle out government research grants (FAPESP).

even though most universities only got tcp pipes by 91, domain was used for
things like uucp and such before.

in late 90s, when Brazil got a president who privatized the country, it left
fapesp and become a political thing but still with heavy ties to academia,
which in Brazil is also very political to begin with, given that almost all
the top ones are state run.

Google understood that and now they have a big state university in their
pockets (by hiring top professor and keeping them on campus), which is the
alma mater of the current person in charge of the br domain now.

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Hasknewbie
This is not limited to Slovakia. Mauritius and South Africa also struggled for
years before getting back control of their TLD (but they eventually did). And
quite a few African countries have the same problem, it seems.

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zokier
The story sounds so bizarre that I imagine there might be bit more behind it.
Like the fact that it apparently took 5 years from the takeover to the
government to even begin negotiations, during which the .com-bubble both grew
and burst, so I imagine that the matter of a TLD wouldn't have been completely
obscure at the time. Also I'm not sure why the government couldn't have just
unilaterally taken over the TLD and charged the people behind the takeover
with fraud or something?

~~~
throwaway1X2
Well, .com-bubble came and went, but mind the settings.

Yes, nowadays, new buildings in every larger city come with gigabit ethernet
wiring and several ISPs' fiber connected to the basement switches as standard.
Older flats (pre-revolution era, before 1989) have FTTH GPON from two or three
providers. Really historical buildings have at least DOCSIS 3.0 or VDSL.
That's the physical layer. You can get 100 mbps/300 mbps internet (depending
on where you are and how lucky you are) for about 20 eur/month, no data limit.

But that came for the price of very slow starts. After the fall of the
socialist ("communist") government in 1989, there was:

a) chaos everywhere, many large companies (in the "common domain" beforehand)
and employers of many workers were fraudulently privatized to the hands of few
con-masters only to be turned into quick cash through sellouts, or just to be
defrauded primitively (literally: 1. have a political friend, 2. privatize for
one crown, 3. withdraw cash [millions to billions of crowns] from all bank
accounts, 4. let it go bankrupt). You could buy and carry firearms no
questions asked (nowadays we still have more reasonable firearm laws than the
rest of the Europe, even some form of Castle Doctrine - in Europe!! - but now
you at least have to go through psychological and firearm test and you cannot
be a convict -> didn't matter in 1990's and even worse, there were global
amnesties, even applied to serious criminals, because "communist" judges must
be wrong, so let's release everyone from the prisons - and those few not
released revolted so hard, army had to be called in). One day you could be a
common Joe, the next day you are a multimillionaire via privatization through
a friend in politics. Or you may be a common Joe going about your common life
and while returning home from work, a car or phone booth next to you explodes,
because one mafia group was paying debts to another...

b) high demand for foreign goods and low wages relative to foreign currencies.
Imagine buying a 486 computer for 100.000 crowns, whereas your monthly wage is
4000 crowns... Would you pay your two years income for a computer?

c) missing voice/data infrastructure (power, water, gas was fine, it was fine
well enough to be defrauded without any investment for many many years ;) ).
Well into 1990's, you still had to be on a waiting list for... a phone line.

\----

So, in 1999, we had a high school field trip to the offices of telephone
company, to be shown a 56k dial-up internet shared across 10 or so computers
there. A year later, the whole school (20 old computers in one room) was wired
through one 56k and we were loading, line by line, new screenshots from the
upcoming Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge.

Well, you could get dial-up at home, for around 1% of your monthly wage PER
HOUR... Many of us, the luckiest ones, actually got the dial-up after 2000 and
were given the limit (by parents already strapped for cash) of 1 hour internet
a day.

While I cannot comment about the accuracy of the takeovers from the OP's
article (I was in the high school after all and was offline fiddling with the
expensive LPT scanner, not watching politics), and there always are hidden
agendas and components to the story; just to summarize, in those days:

a) nobody cared about the .com-bubble, the internets were a very expensive
gimmick to download as many Pascal tutorials and early-media (game reviews
mostly) content as fast as you can on a time-metered connection, typically not
originating from the .sk TLD,

b) many large companies, say machine industries or water mains, with all their
assets were privatized and brought to insolvency on monthly basis (from that
era, "privatization" is still used as a curse word with negative connotation).

\----

The answer to the question why government didn't take over the TLD by force
unilaterally - simply, the first governments cared about defrauding as much as
they could, and the next governments cared about being viewed as the "right"
alternative to the previous ones, while trying to defraud all what was the
left with less media exposure.

And finally, when some wise heads finally came to the realization what the
internet has become worldwide and will become nation-wide, we were already in
the middle of accession negotiations to become an EU member, implementing
required laws. That may be the final answer to your question:

\- the defraudation was done in the "wild west" years of 1990's after the
revolution,

\- while the "repair" had to be done under the strict international-grade laws
and you simply can't take it unilaterally back...

\----

I don't want this to sound overly negative, it was fun years. For example, I,
being born in the 80's era still experienced in my late 90's teens: 8-bit era,
16-bits and finally 32-bits, as they got to us belatedly in 90's. People,
being fed up with slow, time-metered and monopolised 56k even in 2000s,
started popping up amateur 2.4 GHz networks everywhere, even on remote
villages, and that in turn, with "real" ISPs seeing they would get nowhere
with lesser service offering no advantages over a next-door high school
students' wifis, has lead us to the FTTH/FTTB paradise we have nowadays. We
also skipped the ISDN entirely (although it was available). There was time-
metered 56k, flash, flat-rate 56k and wifis everywhere, flash, ADSL, flash,
fiber. The fast 8-bit/16-bit/32-bit transformation experienced in one's youth
lead us to many world-grade startups and companies for the country with the
population count of one larger capital.

Just wanted to say that 90's were dark in Central Europe and things more life-
important than a TLD had changed hands then...

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finchisko
I'am from Slovakia and this one of many examples, how greedy guys tooked
opportunity after fallen communist regime and state laws didn't covered this
kind of situation. It's big shame this is not resolved yet. But there is
initiative to change that and give back national registrator back to public
hands. I hope it will happen soon. The only other country that gave it's top
level domain to private hands is Laos. Their .la is mostly used by biznisses
from Los Angeles. But that's Laos, not country in EU.

~~~
KocourMikes
Hey slow down young commie. Do you realize that almost all gTLDs and most of
ccTLDs in the first world are managed by private commercial entities (source:
CENTR stats on ccTLD management)? Even .CZ, coveted by the author is managed
by private association (association members are registrars).

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jwilk
> Also, the domain is still not open to foreigners.

Why should it be?

~~~
throwaway1X2
Well, with background in the darker parts of the internets, I'm still against
all forms of domain squatting, typosquatting, etc. Others would also describe
me as a heavy EU-skeptic.

But! If you are a company registered in whatever EU country, and, by law, you
can do business in all remaining states and in some cases (taxes, consumer
protection) you are even bound to adhere to their local laws - then, why you
couldn't have a local TLD? And what if you even hold an EU-wide recognized
trademark?

Say I am Spanish company AcmeRoadunnner, with EU-wide trademark on
AcmeRoadrunner, I cannot get acmeroadrunner.sk, because I don't have a Slovak
entity? What for? I am already bound by harmonized EU legislation and when I
sell to Slovakia, I must behave in relation to my customers (when they are
consumers and not business entities) and file VAT according to Slovakia laws.

Say I am Slovak self business AcmeCoyote. Should I really need to create 27
other business entities in 27 other states to register other domains and
prevent domain squatting, when I'm already bound by the 27 states' laws when I
sell there?

Ridiculous! And a nice job for proxy registrars...

PS: In an interesting turn of events, fairly recently, a proxy registrar was
found guilty for breaking gambling laws, where the page hosted on domain
registered by him for his client was showing gambling ads not conforming to
Slovakia legislation... So it is about having a local scapegoat to punish.

PS2: Imagine you cannot send goods to any country, unless you create a
business entity there. In SK-NIC's case, it's the vice versa case, you can
sell here, you MUST charge our VAT here, you MUST obey our consumer laws here,
but hey, sorry, you cannot get ours TLD, f __* you...

~~~
TomMarius
You know there's a thing called organisational unit, right? If the .eu and
.com domains aren't enough for you, you're most likely required to have one
and when you have one, you can register .sk domain. Check the laws.

