The sun always shines on TV
Posted on 20. Jul, 2004 by Cassandra in Technology
Ever heard of the Pacific island of Tuvala? Maybe you haven’t, but global television networks around the world are paying top dollar for the small island’s number one export…it’s internet domain letters…TV. Ironically the island doesn’t even have it’s own television station, but big global networks are falling over themselves to get their websites marketed as a .tv.
The Geneva-based International Organization of Standards, assigning country-code, “top-level domain” names on the Internet, had bestowed dot-tv on Tuvalu, just as it had dealt dot-jp to Japan and dot-fr to France. The Tuvaluans owned that Web address, and could license it for non-Tuvaluans to use.
With no real marketing plan, the Canadian deal foundered, however, and Tuvalu reached another deal, with a California company, in 2000. Two years later, that company sold the new dot-tv Corp. to VeriSign, the powerful outfit that maintains registries for “dot-com” and “dot-net,” the most important Internet suffixes.
There are even a couple of South African site registered as .tv’s…eg…the Phat Joe Show.tv.
There’s another problem though, it appears that the little island is slowly sinking into the big blue Pacific.
The sea is encroaching, apparently because of climate change. With family burial plots sitting just meters from beaches, the ocean eats away the sand. Inland, seawater seeps into pulaka growing pits.
Sopoanga’s government hopes to arrange contingency evacuation plans with New Zealand, but Tuvaluans are torn.
“I’ve been to Fiji, Australia, New Zealand. They’re nice developed countries,” a young mother, Siemai Apinelu, says after church one Sunday. “But I would miss Tuvalu’s simple, easy life.”
The story of an island that once was. ]
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Even in this modern age, island people are being exploited and colonised, not by nations, but big business.
All of this begs the question…what will happen to all the .tv (s) [Thanks Helen]
