Do you have half a million US dollars to spare? Well, if you do, you could be the proud owner of the domain Zimbabwe.com which goes on auction tomorrow (28 August 2008). While you’re at it you, may as well buy Zimbabwe.net, Zimbabwe.org or perhaps Zimbabwe.us Which are also on sale.

You may wonder, who on earth is selling these domains? How do they come to own them in the first place?

Here’s a little history lesson to put it all nicely into perspective. Sometime after the World Wide Web was born, some clever people realised that sooner or later every major company or organisation and every country would one day have a website. So, before so-and-so-company.com was registered, someone would snap it up until one day So And So Company wanted a website and wanted to register the domain only to realise that it was taken. They would then find out who the domain was registered by and buy it from them- at an inflated, which was equal to the domain name many times multiplied.

This came to be called cybersquatting- literally buying on a domain name and “sitting” on it until someone wanted to buy it from you. According to a United States law known as the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act, “Cybersquatting is registering, trafficking in, or using a domain name with bad faith intent to profit from the goodwill of a trademark belonging to someone else.”

On 27th May 1997, some clever opportunist registered Zimabwe.com. We have no record of how many times it has changed hands since then, but tomorrow, it can change into your hands. If this person is not Zimbabwean or if they have no reasonable right to own this domain, have they broken any law?

According to the Whois registry, the domain was registered through GoDaddy.com and is owned by a client of Domains by Proxy Inc of Scottsdale, Arizona, in the United States. Domains by Proxy does private registrations of domain names to protect the identity of the owners.

RepublicofZimbabwe.com, BestofZimbabwe.com, Zimbabwe.org, Zimbabwe.net are other domains which have been registered by various parties and  which are on sale at various prices.

A notice on the temporary website for Zimbabwe.com states that on 26th August 2008 the domain goes on sale. “This country domain is available at auction closing on August 28th with a low starting bid of between US$517,700 and US$750,000. This exclusive domain will generate advertising revenue way above its selling price. Get in on the auction action now and don’t miss out, once it’s gone, you may never have this chance again to own the hottest Zimbabwe domain. Serious Bidders Only. … You can also buy www.ezimbabwe.com for a low starting price of US $9,440 so act now on this great deal.” Reads the notice.

I think the person who owns this domain is highly optimistic, because I don’t see anyone, even the Government of Zimbabwe, paying that much for the domain. But then again, I could be wrong.

Domains have been known to fetch millions of US dollars. The most expensive domain ever sold was sex.com in January 2006, which was snapped up by Escom LLC for US$11 million dollars, although some reports state that the price was as high as US$14 million. Diamonds.com was sold for US$7.5 million, beer.com for US$7 million and shop.com for US$3.5 million. Note that we are not talking of websites here- just the domain which costs an average of US$9.00 in a normal every day registration.

Internationally, domains that pertain to countries are hot property. Tourism is the biggest online product and so any domain that can be used as the address for a potentially busy tourism site is hot property. In 2000 The Government of South Africa started a much publicised battle for the domain southafrica.com with American businessman, Greg Paley. The South African Government, having decided that they wanted to set up a site to promote the country found that the domain they wanted had already been registered. They approached the domain owner but he refused to let it go. Paley Media still owns the domain so I suppose that Greg Paley won in the end.

If this is a precedent to go by, the only way zimbabwe.com can come back to Zimbabwe is for a rich benevolent son or daughter of the soil to buy it and bring it home.

For your reference
:: Article on international domain name disputes
:: Cybersquatting explained on Wikipedia
:: Anti-Cybersquatting Piracy Act (ACPA)
:: South African Government wants Southafrica.com