Company “Hostmaster” lost the case in the Economic court of Kyiv

On the past Friday the company “Hostmaster”, the acting administrator of the domain .ua, handed the appeal against the decision of the Economic court of Kyiv. The Economic court had rejected the suit of  “Hostmaster” and acknowledged the governmental decree of 22 July “On administration of the domain .ua” to be valid.

This information was communicated to the agency “Interfax-Ukraine” by the manager of the company “Hostmaster”.

The government endorsed the initiative of the USS and the State communication committee and passed the administrative functions to the Ukrainian Network Informational Center (UNIC). “Hostmaster” appealed against this decree, because, in its opinion, the government had no right to meddle into the economic activities of the enterprise.

On 7 October the Economic court of Kyiv considered the claim of “Hostmaster” and refused to satisfy the demands stated in the writ. The judge resolved that the decree did not violate the rights of “Hostmaster”, since the company could work together with the UNIC.

The court also pointed out that the rules of the ICANN were not regarded as a source of right in Ukraine and could not be applied by court.

The domain .ua was rendered by the international organization IANA (which is called ICANN now) to Ukrainian citizens Dmitriy Kokhmaniuk and Igor Sviridov in 1992. Before 2001 the domain was developed by several enthusiasts, who had created the Ukrainian network coordination group (UANCG). In 2001 they founded the company “Hostmaster”, which concluded the agreement with D. Kokhmaniuk and I. Sviridov and began to administer the domain. The Ukrainian government started to claim their rights to the domain since 2001.

Initially it had been planned that the state share in the enterprise, which was called the UNIC, would be 25%, but later this share increased to 50%.

The creation of the UNIC was accompanied with a scandal: the greatest providers’ association “Internet-Association of Ukraine”, which united 70 participants of the market (including the large-scale providing companies) and took part in the negotiations on the creation of such center, refused from membership in the UNIC, since “the UNIC did not reflect in full the interests of the state and society”.

The state registration of the UNIC was completed the last week.

In the end of October the international human rights protecting organization “Reporters without frontiers” spread the appeal, in which this organization expressed its anxiety about the attempts of the USS to take control of the domain .ua. In particular, the human rights protectors mentioned the endeavor of state organs to take away the administration of the domain from the company “Hostmaster”. “Reporters without frontiers” sent a copy of the appeal to the ICANN.

(«Interfax-Ukraine», 17 November 2003, www.interfax.kiev.ua)

(http://for-ua.com/news/2003/11/08/162547.html)