newzealand.com gets worse

The saga of the Government paying $1m for newzealand.com gets worse.

First they tried to get the name by taking legal action under the UDRP (designed for trademark disputes) and not only lost heavily but actually got found guilty of “reverse domain name hijacking” by having taken the case. Lots of bad publicity as it was pompously proclaimed to be in the name of Her Majesty the Queen. Poor Liz got all the bad headlines.

Then they paid $1 million for it – a staggering amount. Having followed domain name politics and values for many years I am not alone in saying this was a magnitude too high. $100,000 may have been defensible but $1 million is just playing Santa with our money.

Finally today it emerges that the staff of Trade NZ didn’t even have permission for their escapades with our money.

So why have heads not rolled? In a private company taking legal action without authority and an unauthorised $1m purchase would see you on the unemployment line.