Pacific island nation hopes to win back .nu domain from Sweden
A tiny coral island in the Pacific Ocean is hoping next month to win back from Sweden something it signed away nearly 30 years ago: the domain name .nu.
A court in Södertörn, outside Stockholm, is due to rule on March 14th on whether the island nation of Niue has the right to control the domain, which was granted to it in 1997 by the internet domain name authority ICANN, but is now operated by the Internet Foundation in Sweden.
The story goes back to the early days of the internet when a US businessman called Bill Semich offered to buy the rights to control the domain from the island, and as .nu didn't seem as valuable as the .tv domain allotted to its Pacific neighbour Tuvalu, the island sold off the rights.
What they didn't realise was how valuable the domain was in Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands, where "nu" means "now". Over 550,000 sites were using the domain at its peak use in 2017, including popular sites like vecka.nu and tv.nu.
In an archived homepage from Semich's IUSN Foundation, Semich claimed to have run the domain though a non-profit organization, which used the revenues from .nu to provide wifi internet access on Niue.
But Nieu's leader broke its agreement with him in 2000, since when it has been trying to get back control.
Semich passed management of .nu to the Internet Foundation in 2013, since when Pär Brumark, the Swedish domain expert who serves as Nieu's Special Envoy on the case, estimates it has earned about 210 million kronor in revenues.
Toke Talagi, the Premier of Niue from 2008 to 2020, has accused the Internet Foundation of "neo-colonialism".
The Internet Foundation's press spokesperson Jannike Tillå denied it was profiteering from the domain in comments to the SvD newspaper, claiming that it had made a loss on it between 2013 and 2019 and only made a profit of 8m kronor between 2019 and 2023.
It also stressed that, while it managed the domain, Semich's organisation still owned it.
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A court in Södertörn, outside Stockholm, is due to rule on March 14th on whether the island nation of Niue has the right to control the domain, which was granted to it in 1997 by the internet domain name authority ICANN, but is now operated by the Internet Foundation in Sweden.
The story goes back to the early days of the internet when a US businessman called Bill Semich offered to buy the rights to control the domain from the island, and as .nu didn't seem as valuable as the .tv domain allotted to its Pacific neighbour Tuvalu, the island sold off the rights.
What they didn't realise was how valuable the domain was in Sweden, Denmark and The Netherlands, where "nu" means "now". Over 550,000 sites were using the domain at its peak use in 2017, including popular sites like vecka.nu and tv.nu.
In an archived homepage from Semich's IUSN Foundation, Semich claimed to have run the domain though a non-profit organization, which used the revenues from .nu to provide wifi internet access on Niue.
But Nieu's leader broke its agreement with him in 2000, since when it has been trying to get back control.
Semich passed management of .nu to the Internet Foundation in 2013, since when Pär Brumark, the Swedish domain expert who serves as Nieu's Special Envoy on the case, estimates it has earned about 210 million kronor in revenues.
Toke Talagi, the Premier of Niue from 2008 to 2020, has accused the Internet Foundation of "neo-colonialism".
The Internet Foundation's press spokesperson Jannike Tillå denied it was profiteering from the domain in comments to the SvD newspaper, claiming that it had made a loss on it between 2013 and 2019 and only made a profit of 8m kronor between 2019 and 2023.
It also stressed that, while it managed the domain, Semich's organisation still owned it.
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