After we ran our article about the fate of .sk, the nation of Slovakia flew into a rage. And now, here's part two...

All your .sks are belong to us

In his talk – given in the Czech Republic – Jombík noted: "It is not so long ago that we had a common state and a common domain .cs. Then our countries were divided and along with them the national domains .cz and .sk. While your domain is quite successful, we in Slovakia are fighting for the domain .sk to belong to us again." [Our emphasis.]

Following our report, we have received heaps of aggressive and critical comments both on the story and through Twitter. Virtually every one has come from a signatory to the petition and every one that we have looked into works for or owns a company that would directly benefit from the .sk registry contract being taken away from the privately held SK‑NIC and given to a new non-profit organization based on the .cz model.

Now, of course, benefitting from something that you argue for does not mean that you don't passionately believe that that is the right thing.

The Slovakian internet community has good reason to complain about how its .sk registry has been run and how its opinions have not held much sway over the past decade. The fact that the .sk registry retains an outdated business model and runs outdated software must be a cause of enormous frustration for the Slovakian internet community (and the Czech internet community).

But spreading misinformation about past ownership, maligning the intentions of government ministers, and smearing the reputation of a company that would almost certainly improve that situation if it took over, serves only to undermine the arguments that have been put forward.

If the local internet community fails in its goal to have a greater say over how the .sk registry is run, before it blames the current or new operators, or the government, or news websites, it would do well to take a good, hard look in the mirror. ®