The fight over the Slovak internet domain is not over yet. The company called SK-Nic that administers the Slovak national internet domain ".sk" will change hands in the upcoming weeks. A British firm called CentralNic Group is buying it for 26 million. However, since the ".sk" is being used by companies, public institutions as well as research institutes, activists are asking for the domain not to belong to a private owner. They say the country's code top-level domain should serve the public, as is the case in the majority of European countries.
"We believe that even such discrete re-delegation should follow the official procedures, such as the approval of the local community, however, nobody has discussed it with us," says Ondrej Jombík, one of the activists.
After the Deputy Prime Minister for Informatization, Peter Pellegrini, signed an amendment to a contract with its current administrator SK-Nic, the administrator sold it to the British company. According to Peter Pellegrini, his office has negotiated some important steps in the new contract.
"We have managed to negotiate the scrapping of a blocking mechanism, we have concrete steps on how to leave the contract, we are following the needs of the local internet community, and yes, the financing stayed at a level of 5%," stated Pellegrini in the parliament.
To sort out the dispute, the Slovak internet community has contacted the world's internet authority ICANN. Since the activists claim that not all conditions were met during the transfer, they are asking ICANN to look into it.
