The South Pacific island of Niue is one of the most remote places in the world. Its nearest neighbors, Tonga and American Samoa, are hundreds of miles away. The advent of the Internet promised, in a small way, to make Niue and its roughly 2,000 residents more connected to the rest of the world.
In the late 1990s, an American businessman offered to connect the island to the internet. All he wanted in return was the right to control the .nu suffix assigned to Niue for web addresses. The domain didn’t look as profitable as .tv — which was given to Tuvalu, another South Pacific nation — and Niue’s (pronounced New-ay) leaders signed off on the deal. But soon the two sides found themselves at odds.
Now, after more than two decades of back-and-forth, the dispute is finally nearing resolution in a court of law. Disputes over domain names were not uncommon during the Internet’s infancy, but experts have a hard time remembering one that lasted this long.
It turned out that .nu was actually very valuable. “Nu” now means Swedish, Danish and Dutch, and thousands of Scandinavians have registered websites with this suffix, creating a steady business for Niue business partner Bill Semich.
Niue, an oval atoll of about 100 square miles, about the size of Lincoln, felt cheated of a reliable cash flow that would have helped it reduce its reliance on tourism and foreign aid. He had turned to unorthodox sources of income in the past, selling stamps and coins to collectors. He had also rented the international dialing code, until the deeply Christian residents of Niue began to be woken up in the middle of the night by strange phone sex calls from Japan.
Niue canceled the agreement with Mr Semich in 2000 and has been trying to reclaim .nu — which is now operated by the Swedish Internet Foundation, a non-profit organization — ever since. He is seeking about $30 million in compensation from the foundation, an amount that could transform a small island that was recognized by the United States as a sovereign state only in 2022. The dispute reached the Swedish courts, and a judge in Stockholm began hearing the arguments. of Niue last week. A decision is expected to be issued in the coming days.
“This is a unique, complex and somewhat strange case,” said David Taylor, an intellectual property and domain name specialist at law firm Hogan Lovells, adding that this made it extremely difficult to predict the outcome of the case.
For Niue’s captain, it is a struggle for self-determination. Niue is self-governing but heavily dependent on New Zealand, and the two are in a political relationship known as free association.
“We are victims of digital colonialism,” Niue’s Prime Minister Dalton Tagelagi said in a video from his office in the capital Alofi. “This domain, .nu, recognizes Niue as a sovereign country. That’s how important it is to our identity.”
Critics dispute this assessment, as officially there is no sovereignty in cyberspace, only administrative zones that divide the web into domains such as .nu and, for example, the .nz suffix assigned to New Zealand.
Winning the case could help ensure Niue’s long-term survival, Mr Tagelagi said. The island’s population is now about a third of what it was in the 1960s, and the empty houses that dot the island are a reminder of the people who left for better economic opportunities. A win could help fund its bid for UN membership, similar to how Tuvalu gained UN membership after monetizing .tv.
If Niue can get .nu back, it could bring in up to $2 million a year, according to Par Brumark, a domain name expert acting for Niue in the Swedish case.
Mr Semich has repeatedly denied Niue’s allegations of wrongdoing. In 2013, his company, Internet Users Society Niue, entered into an agreement to hand over the operation of .nu to the Swedish Internet Foundation, which manages Sweden’s .se domain. Niue sued. A years-long procedural battle ensued that went all the way to Sweden’s Supreme Court until its legal system decided to hear Niue’s case.
Jannike Tilla, the foundation’s vice-president, rejected Niue’s claims against it and said it was a subcontractor for IUSN, adding: “The domain is very important for Swedish users, especially for many critical social institutions.”
Some Swedish newspapers, for example, have .nu in their web addresses. Websites currently using the domain are not expected to experience any changes even if Niue wins its case.
IUSN addressed questions to Emani Lui, a newly elected member of Niue’s parliament. Mr Lui runs Niue’s only private internet provider, has worked with IUSN in the past and is the son of the prime minister who signed the original deal with Mr Semich. He said the .nu dispute had become so bitter that successive governments had lost sight of other options Niue had.
“We would have the best in the Pacific, probably one of the best communications systems in the world” if Niue had seen IUSN in person, he said. “It was not taken over. It was more like: We want the cash.”
Mr Tagelagi rejected this idea.
“It’s morality. Every nation, regardless of size, must be treated fairly and equally,” he said. “Sometimes we get overlooked because we’re a little island out there in the vast blue. But you can only be patient for so long.”
