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

Opportunity knocks

The problem with launching an angry, emotional campaign based on innuendo rather than fact, however, is that it looks a lot more like a political smear campaign than a grassroots effort to effect change.

• The accusations of .sk being "stolen" are simply not true. Not liking the end result is not the same as it being illegal.
• The slurs against CentralNic are unfounded. Not wanting someone to take over is not the same as that company being corrupt or manipulative.
• The attacks on the Slovakian government officials are unfair. The government entered a contract with a private company to run .sk a very long time ago and it has simply adhered to that.
• The attacks on the current deputy prime minister are unwarranted. Pellegrini in fact took an interest in the process following the outcry and has made contractual changes based on those concerns – which he then released to the internet community. He stopped short of tearing up the entire contract to give it to a new, undefined body because that was the responsible thing to do as a government minister.

Since pretty much everything the campaign claimed was false, we took a closer look at what was going on behind the scenes and discovered that:

• Many of those behind the campaign are closely affiliated with a new political party, Progressive Slovakia, which hopes to steal seats from the mainstream parties.
• Almost all the signatories to the petition work for or are closely connected to the local internet community that has been at loggerheads with SK‑NIC for nearly a decade.
• Those supporting the campaign are pushing for SK‑NIC to adopt the same software as the .cz registry.
• The proposed non-profit organization that would take over running of SK‑NIC is based on the one that operates the .cz registry.
• Campaigners were arguing among themselves about what the policies of a new .sk registry operator should be – particularly whether it should retain its policy of only allowing those based in Slovakia to register .sk domains.

Our coverage suggesting that the campaign was more to do with local registrars gaining greater power over the .sk registry and making larger profits than the claimed goal of "returning the .sk registry to the people of Slovakia" has, inevitably, attracted their ire.

Czech please

Somewhat unusually, given that .sk is the country-code top-level domain for Slovakia, the most fervent critics work for internet companies based in neighboring Czech Republic, with many closely associated with the .cz registry.

The article most frequently quoted in which the claim is made that the .sk registry was "stolen" was written by Ondřej Caletka, a sysadmin at CESNET, the operator of national e‑infrastructure for science, research, development and education in the Czech Republic.

Caletka promoted a talk given by Ondrej Jombík earlier this year in which Jombík pushed the idea that the .sk merger with Global Network Services in 1999 was a calculated plan to give power to "the Americans."

Jombík is a key member behind the petition to set up a new non-profit to run .sk. He complained in response to our article that "this is what they do with every major problem in Slovakia – turn it into political fight."

Except Jombík failed to mention that one of the seven people listed on the campaign's website, complete with photo, is Michael Truban. Truban is the founder of one of Slovakia's largest hosting companies, WebSupport, and also happens to be one of the core members of the new political party Progressive Slovakia. He sits on its management board and has been given his own biography on the party's website.

Truban has been an outspoken critic of SK‑NIC and Pellegrini – particularly his decision not to hand more power to the internet community. In one post, Truban acknowledged hiring lawyers and consulting with foreign registries in order to push the case.