HI. TECH
Registering domain name beats trying to fight for it with someone else

By John Duchemin
Advertiser Staff Writer

•	Hawai'i technology on public radio Hear The Advertiser's John Duchemin and the latest Hawai'i technology-related news every Wednesday on Think Tech Hawai'i, 5 to 6 p.m. on Hawai'i Public Radio KIPO FM 89.3, with hosts Jay Fidell, Laurie Akau, Don Mangiarelli and Gordon Bruce. TOMORROW: "Tech at the Hawaii Opera Theatre" will be the topic on Think Tech Hawai'i, featuring guests Gordon Svec and Peter Dean Beck of the Hawaii Opera Theatre.

Hawai'i tourism officials waited three years after naming the Hawai'i Convention Center, and spending millions of dollars advertising it, to attempt to register the Internet domain name hawaiiconventioncenter.com in early 1998.

Like hundreds of businesses in similar situations, they were met with a rude surprise. The owners of a small Maui convention planning company, Hawai'i Meeting Builders, had already claimed the domain name in 1997, and were using it to market their business. They refused to hand the name over to the Hawai'i Tourism Authority, the convention center's state-financed governing body.

A simple registration process, which likely would have cost the state a few hundred dollars, thus became a fruitless five-year negotiation that has ended up in court. The tourism authority on Jan. 10 sued Hawai'i Meeting Builders co-owner John Hendrickson, alleging cyberpiracy, and asking the court to force him to hand over the domain name.

Hendrickson denies wrongdoing and promises to fight the lawsuit. He says the authority has no special right to the hawaiiconventioncenter.com domain name — and that he has every right to use it for his business.

This complicates matters for the state, which can't claim Hendrickson is a garage-based cyberleech trying to extract millions of dollars from honest business people. Hendrickson did offer to sell the domain name for the ridiculous sum of $6 million last summer — but said he only did so to indicate firmly that the name wasn't for sale.

That's why state lawyers opted to skip the far cheaper and quicker arbitration process run by Internet regulatory bodies, who regularly depose cybersquatters, in favor of a lawsuit. The state admits its case simply isn't strong enough to guarantee a victory in arbitration.

This possibly long and expensive court fight, subsidized by taxpayers, was brought about because the Hawai'i Tourism Authority got caught with its cyberpants down.

State attorneys plead ignorance — it was "only" 1998, after all, and the phenomenon of cybersquatting was relatively new, so tourism officials didn't realize the importance of domain name registration.

But that's not a plausible excuse. By January 1998, when Convention Center management firm SMG decided to register the domain name, the pop-culture Internet had been in full swing for at least four or five years — and cybersquatting was already a well-known problem to the Internet-savvy.

As an agency with tens of millions of dollars dedicated to marketing the visitor industry, why didn't the Hawai'i Tourism Authority understand the vast marketing potential of the Internet — at least enough to take a few basic steps to protect intellectual property?

Tourism officials are lucky the damage isn't worse. The convention center registered its current World Wide Web site, hawaiiconvention.com, in July 1998, but failed to register names including hawaiiconventioncenter.org or -.net, or the new -.biz and -.info until May 2001. More than three years after the authority encountered Hendrickson, those names were wide open to cybersquatting.

For that delay, convention center officials cannot claim ignorance. Fortunately, they seem to have belatedly learned a painful New Economy lesson: registering "YourNameHere.com" early is quicker, cheaper and far less humiliating than trying to take it away from someone else.

Reach John Duchemin at jduchemin@honoluluadvertiser.com or 525-8062.