Niue, originally uploaded by Michael and Jennene

There’s controversy over one of Sweden’s favorite Internet domains, while the country’s official address in Cyberspace is doing better than ever.

Sweden was a pioneer on the Internet, but for some reason the organization that administered the official domain “se” was extremely restrictive in the early days. Only those who had gone through the long and expensive process of registering an official company name with the patent authority could register that name with a dot-se.

Into this obvious gap stepped a businessman named Bill Semich. In 1997 he talked the island country of Niue into letting him administer the nation’s top domain “nu”. “Nu” means “new” in Swedish, and soon Semich and his Nu Domain were selling dot-nu addresses to thousands of Swedish companies, organizations, and individuals. The head of Nu Domain in Sweden, Per Darnell, has told Swedish “Internet World” that over the years the deal has meant USD 3.5 million for Niue, which has gone to provide wireless Internet and other infrastructure on the island.

But “Internet World” reports that a struggle seems to be going on over “nu”. According to Pär Brumark, who claims to be an independent consultant representing Niue, the island nation feels cheated by Semich, and wants control of the domain back. Semich has replied that the story is just part of a campaign by “business pirates” seeking to lower the value of his company to improve their chances of taking over. Brumark, he says, is part of the group trying to take over the domain.

The following day “Computer Sweden” (like Swedish “Internet World” part of idg.se) contacted the government of Niue, who said they had never heard of Pär Brumark, who certainly wasn’t acting on their behalf. However, Richard Hipa, vice chairman of Niue’s IT Development Council is critical of Bill Semich and does want to regain control of the domain.

Meanwhile, better late than never, since dot-se was opened up for general registration in 2003, the domain is gaining more and more users. Swedish “Internet World” reports that there are now 500,000 se registrations, 100,000 coming in the past year. Between 2002 and 2003, when the domain was opened to all comers, the number of registered se domains more than doubled.

According to iis, which administers the domain, here’s the growth in new dot-se registrations over the years. Note the huge increase when the rules were changed in 2003:

1983 1
1984 1
1985 8
1986 9
1987 16
1988 12
1989 30
1990 61
1991 80
1992 136
1993 256
1994 1071
1995 7383
1996 17670
1997 19859
1998 13632
1999 12406
2000 21614
2001 16945
2002 16375
2003 122147
2004 99284
2005 134177
2006 204838