A tiny island nation has put the rights to .tv up for grabs – but what’s this? Problematic contract clauses? Again? One of the internet’s most lucrative and high-profile registry contracts is up for grabs – and once again the bidding process appears to be highly problematic. The contract to run .tv has been held by dot-com operator Verisign for 20 years. This agreement expires this year, and Tuvalu, the small island state that owns the top- …
I heard the .tv bit & immediately thought "Tuvalu". No hesitation, just a "I know that TLD code. What the hell has Tuvalu done now?" When TFA confirmed that fact I knew that I've got waaaaaay too much time on my hands.
I'll get my coat, it's the one with the extra long sleeves that clasp in the back. =-)p
I always preferred 'fabulous' as in 'Read The Fabulous Manual'
Side note, the Outskette's geography teacher has apparently been using 'RTFQ' when discussing recent mock GSCEs - natch, the Outskette knew what he meant
-----> What most geography teacher do from 1pm on Fridays
Actually this happens all the time. Tender for a government contract ? It may be public, but if you're in that particular market it's pretty easy to spot the few clauses that guarantee that a specific company has already been chosen - no use applying.
This is done openly and everyone is aware of it, so why choose to make the negociations secret ? That's the kind of thing that is going to ensure that a gigantic spotlight is turned on and targetting the affair closely. It is the exact opposite of what is apparently wanted : to ensure that the Tuvalu government gets to quietly pick another provider.
If they had made a public offering with the criteria required to ensure many operators could apply, then they could let the application period pass by quasi-ignored by most and pick the operator of their choice at the end, no questions asked. Of course, the incumbent would whine, but everyone would expect that and the comments would be few. Mission accomplished.
Instead, Tuvalu now has the attention of the Internet world for trying to avoid attention.
Bravo.
I've had experience dealing with government bureaucrats in tiny nations. They are just as dishonest and corrupt as our politicians and bureaucrats, but they are amateurish, and just don't have the polished skills of our first world scumbags.
It's like they don't have a good professional base to learn from, and maybe go by what they see in the movies or on tv. It's usually kind of fun to deal with them because you can figure out the con right up front.
It funny, because you are absolutely right. They are completely up front about the costs. And, the cost is very reasonable.
Where I was doing business, I was told that I needed to have a "special meeting" with the mayor, and that the cost was $100 US.
I'm sure the cost of a "special meeting" with the mayor of any US city would cost a lot more than $100.
I wonder if those kind of clauses is a step-up from simply describing in detail how your existing system works and asking other vendors to basically copy the user interface verbatim.
One of our customers did something like that a few years ago. And to make matters more confusing: They could not keep using their old system, because the vendor had pulled support a long time ago.
It looks like one of two possibilities.
There's the " job interview carve-up" or the "we don't want to change anything really".
In the first it's the same as when a job description/person spec is written so that the person they want to give the job to ( CEO's mate,mistress,brother-in-law.....) is the only person who can reasonably apply. ("Must have.................. 19 years experience playing golf and wear size 9 Timberland boots". OK I exaggerate a bit- but only a bit. I've seen a few barkingly long and specific JD/PSs that were clearly written with an individual in mind).
News: .tv registry rights up for sale
Insight: El Reg article
Appreciated, and also fascinating. If the $5m fee is 7% of GDP then if they get a 50% profit share that could add 10% to their GDP in a single contract. Let's hope they find an amicable way to make this a properly competitive tender process.
Not that .tv should have that level of value. One site I'm aware of switched to .tv and has since returned to .com, because users just don't seem to care terribly much. Netflix and Youtube probably provide most of the online TV activity and both run from .com anyway.
> Not that .tv should have that level of value
It only has value for the marketing departments. Potential clients really don't care, I'm willing to bet there isn't a single user out there who thought "Dooh, look, it's .tv, it means there must be things to watch, like on my TV, see? Let's go spend some money!"...
Or did you ever hear "That site 'Netflix.com' can't be but stupid amateurs, else they would had called themselves 'Netflix.tv'."?
"Appreciated, and also fascinating. If the $5m fee is 7% of GDP then if they get a 50% profit share that could add 10% to their GDP in a single contract. Let's hope they find an amicable way to make this a properly competitive tender process."
That's more or less what I was thinking. Why even put it out to tender at all? They know what they get now, they know the profit levels Verisign are making off it. Just advertise it for $10 or $15m licence fee and the buy knows they will be getting at least $5m to $10m in profits, guaranteed. No fuss, no muss. The downside, of course, is no kickbacks, no lucrative non-executive board positions etc.
> not that .tv should have that level of value.
The reason why .tv has value is that domain squatters seem to have managed to reserve every single combination of three-letter-acronyms, every word in the English dictionary, and most of the two word combinations, leaving nothing for people who want to give their companies reasonable names.
Not that squatting should be allowed.
Most non-techie people, I'm fairly sure, think everything is a dot com or a .co.country code - unless it's a charity (.org). And couldn't care less beyond that. In fact far too many just click on a link or look for a site by typing its name into Google ( and then click on a link). Actual site names are about as much used as IP addresses to an awful lot of the public. And if they do try to type it in to a browser probably automatically type .com and end up with a Google search if it isn't that,anyway.
Good luck to Tuvalu if they can get a few more millions for selling old rope.
I was speaking with a group of people some time ago now (a couple of years at least), and for some reason browser bookmarks/favourites cropped up in the discussion. One person in the group just looked puzzled, he apparently always just Googled the sites, had never bookmarked anything, and wasn't even sure how to do that, as he just never used that functionality!
I always suspected Chrome hiding the Bookmark bar by default, was to make them less visible to new users, and so encourage people to use search instead! Me paranoid much, nah....
"I saw one user fire up IE. It defaulted to Bing. In the Bing search box they'd type "Google". Then in the Google search box they'd enter the URL of the site they wanted to go to"
'Google' is most searched word on Bing, Google says
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-58749525
"And if they do try to type it in to a browser probably automatically type .com and end up with a Google search if it isn't that,anyway."
I'm seeing more and more advertising that ends with "Just search blah blah blah". I often wonder if that works or if searchers may end up at competitor sites, depending on their own location and search history.
But worse, I see adverts that just say "find us on Facebook". No, thanks, I'll try somewhere else.
Perhaps follow the lead of the SMOM ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Malta ) and be a sovereign nation with no (or very little) actual territory. Then they could move the whole nation to a more elevated location.
Leads to my wondering if TV has any TV broadcasters
@AC - "start thinking about either exporting citizens or importing lots of big rocks and concrete"
Requirement of the .TV registry request for proposal:
"Proposals must be printed single-sided on A-4 2400000 gsm concrete in 192pt Times and delivered to Tuvalu sea-wall construction proposal reception site in triplicate."
to have all the human cockroaches from ICANN followed around with an old boot or a rolled up newspaper? Paul Twomey was twice as bad and only slightly less brazen. At least our favorite rag is willing to spare a beady vulture eye to keep tabs on them. The other is probably on Idjit Pai...
Sounds like (obviously is) a shonky done deal. Until one of the other possible competitors files court proceedings there challenging the process, and hires some local PR to explain to the local news media how the minister is not working in the best interest of the country, and leaves a dangling question of whose interests he is working.
Why are they outsourcing? Running a domain registry isn't rocket science. Even if their operating costs were 10 times higher than Verisign's (for example because the computers are in Australia), that's still only $7.50 per domain, versus $50.00 per domain in revenue. They've had 20 years under Verisign to think about this, and all they could come up with was to listen to some shyster at renewal time.
Plus then they could control the marketing. Send a postcard at domain renewal time, "Thank you for supporting the Tuvalu economy. Your registration pays for one child to attend school for 2.7 hours." (I made that number up.)
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