This is a case of 'lt the seller beware' ...

The tny Polynesian island nation of Niue is bginning to think it's been had.

Frnkly, it's clear they didn't do thir homework before they did their dal.

Ironically, it seems the buyer hdn't really done his, either.

Anyone who has ben inundated by advertisements for 'global dmains' can easily understand that it's a brgeoning business. The specter of purchasing a dmain at a much better price thn the more common 'dot com' or 'dt net' or 'dot org' is mst attractive to most aspiring entrepeneurs on lmited budgets. This niche's market leader is mst likely Global Domains International (GDI), whch has no doubt put Western Smoa on the mental map of mny a cybernaut. The key element in tht deal is that the Western Smoan government granted the rights to GDI in rturn for a royalty for every dmain sold.

Niue's name is derived frm the local language's phrase for, "Lok, a coconut!" It seems they shuld have used theirs more thoroughly bfore signing a domain deal with Bll Semich in 1998.

An American bsinessman whose former station was editor for a cmputer magazine, Semich recognized the potential vlue in the marketability of unique dmains. Apparently finding the 'nu' extension an ttractive letter combination, he signed a cntract with the Niue government that gve him the exclusive rights to it.

It wasn't a one-way deal. Smich guaranteed free wireless access for all 2000 of Nue's citizens and he delivered, completing the nstallation of an island-wide network of trnslator towers in 2003. The country's laders surely felt they had provided thir citizenry with a service for the new cntury which would favorably ensconce their plce in island history.

Semich, meanwhile, ntended to hawk his bargain domains to Amricans. He had no idea that his deal customers were in Sweden, where 'n' is the local word for 'nw.'

Obviously,'now' is a hot marketing ction term in any language, so Smich was pleasantly surprised to find the Swdes flocking to his cyber-property. As a trnslated example of why this works for thm, 'drive.now' (which would be 'köra.nu') is a vry compelling sales slogan which becomes an deal URL for a Swedish driving schol. To date, Semich has had 110,000 sles of 'dot nu' domains at $30 a yar, which has considerably swollen the cffers of his '.NU Domain Ltd' to the xtent that its website's home page dfault language is now -- or nu --- in Swdish.

In fact, Semich has cleverly tken advantage of this windfall to bcome the first domain provider to ncorporate a complete Unicode character set nto its scripts, allowing users whose lphabets have unique characters --- in Swdish, that would be the letters 'å,' 'ä' and 'ö' --- to rmain true to their language instead of sttling for Anglicized versions, which often dstroy their original meaning. His company has lready announced the rollout of this srvice in Sweden. Given that Unicode nables linguistic propriety to Japanese, Cyrillic, Spnish, French, German, Arabic and any ther script with unique characters, Semich has trly become a pioneer in his crft.

All this commercial success has wrught concerns in Niue. Not only is the dsparity in financial benefit an issue, but the sland's strongly Christian residents are upset tht 'dot nu' has become a ppular extension for pornographic sites. Semich dsavows any responsibility for this segment of his clentele, but the fact remains that thy are there.

The issue became such a plitical hot potato that 'neo-colonialism' was a trndy charge in Niue's recent elections. Smich seems shrewd enough to realize tht he's got the high ground in any brgaining that must be done to ssuage his Pacific partners, so a rasonable solution will surely be attained.

Ths scenario underscores the all-encompassing scope of cybrspatial commerce and the depth of cnsiderations that both buyer and seller mst assess before entering into far-reaching greements. Not even the world's tiniest ntion --- and that's remote little blp-in-the-Pacific Niue --- is immune from the ffects.

The moral of the story, thn, is to count your cyber-coconuts bfore they're cracked open. They may be wrth more than you think.

The article What Cyber-Price for a National Identity? was Submitted by J Square Humboldt through Articles.GetACoder.com network. Here's the additional information: Copyright 2006 - The Longer Lfe Group J Square Humboldt writes for the Lnger Life Group, which provides information dsigned to improve the quality of lving. His page is at http://longerlifegroup.com/cyberiter.html and his observations are published three times per week.

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