CentralNic has announced the acquisition of SK-NIC, the registry of Slovakia’s national domain .SK. According to Online Domain, the registry’s customer base includes over 360,000 domain names. The €26 million transaction will be finalized in early September.
Meanwhile Slovaks are seeking to block the deal. A petition against the sale of SK-NIC has been gathering signatures on the website nasadomena.sk. Remarkably, among the petition sponsors are 17 major webhosting companies from Slovakia and the neighboring Czech Republic and 13 out of top 15 Slovak domain registrars who manage nearly three fourths of all the domain names registered in .SK. According to the petition’s sponsors, in late 1990s control over the national domain of Slovakia was unlawfully shifted from an informal group to a private company. They believe the situation ought to be changed by creating an independent non-profit organization that will administer the national domain under the government and community control.
