How Cameroon Auctioned Its Internet Namespace…

"It's an odd scene to picture: a domainer's reps in a sit-down with Ephraim Inoni, the prime minister of Cameroon, to discuss the power of type-in typo traffic and pay-per-click ads." CNN

Early in August 2006, the Internet was awash with reports of a “typo-squatting” scheme involving Cameroon. According to these reports, “Internet authorities in in the West African nation that owns the .cm top level domain (TLD) have been accused of authorizing a DNS wildcard that has the effect of redirecting all accidental .cm traffic instead of returning an error.”

In layman’s terms, Cameroon Internet authorities were redirecting all misspelled .com addressed (e.g. www.dibussi.cm instead of www.dibussi.com ) to an advert-based website (agoga.com), where they were making millions of dollars in pay-per-click advert revenue (Pay-per-click is an advertising system where advertisers pay an agreed amount for each click delivered to their site).

While not technically illegal, since the misspelled domain names are not being registered but simply redirected to another site, these actions raised serious ethical concerns.

To many observers, it was obvious that this was too creative a scheme to have been hatched by Cameroonian authorities alone. Some even believed that the wildcarding of non-registered domains within the .cm Top Level Domain may have been done without the official consent of Cameroonian authorities. For months, therefore, attempts to identify the real faces behind the mask became a veritable whodunit saga.

This week, CNN finally revealed the person behind the .cm mystery in an article titled “The man who owns the Internet”. According to the article, the brain behind it all is Kevin Ham, described as “the most powerful dotcom mogul you've never heard of”. Based in the Canadian city of Vancouver, Ham’s empire is worth about 300 million dollars. Even more interesting, the article revealed that Cameroonian authorities were active participants and partners in the typo-squatting scheme, and that a cut from the adverts revenue (estimated by some to be at least three million dollars a year) goes to “the government of Cameroon” – yeah right!

Here is an excerpt from the CNN story:

“Ham makes money every time someone clicks on an ad -- as does his partner in this venture, the West African country of Cameroon. Why Cameroon? It has the unforeseen good fortune of owning .cm as its country code -- just as Germany runs all names that end with .de. The difference is that hardly any .cm names are registered, and the letters are just one keyboard slip away from .com, the mother lode of all domains. Ham landed connections to the Cameroon government and flew in his people to reroute the traffic.
…
Over a series of conversations a few weeks later in Vancouver, Ham shares some details about a deal that, despite his innate reticence, he's clearly proud of. About a year ago, he says, he worked his contacts to gain connections to government officials in Cameroon. Then he flew several confidantes to Yaoundé, the capital, to make their pitch. His key programmer went along to handle the technical details.

"Hey," Ham says, flagging his techie down near the office elevator. "Didn't you meet with the president of Cameroon?"

"Nah," the programmer says. "We met with the prime minister. But we did see the president's compound."
...
It's an odd scene to picture: a domainer's reps in a sit-down with Ephraim Inoni, the prime minister of Cameroon, to discuss the power of type-in typo traffic and pay-per-click ads. And yet, as with most of the angles Ham has played, the Cameroon scheme is ingeniously straightforward.

Ham's people installed a line of software, called a "wildcard," that reroutes traffic addressed to any .cm domain name that isn't registered. In the case of Cameroon, a country of 18 million with just 167,000 computers connected to the Internet that means hundreds of millions of names. Type in "paper.cm" and servers owned by Camtel, the state-owned company that runs Cameroon's domain registry, redirect the query to Ham's Agoga.com servers in Vancouver.

The servers fill the page with ads for paper and office-supply merchants. (Officials at Yahoo confirm that the company serves ads for Ham's .cm play.) It all happens in a flash, and since Ham doesn't own or register the names, he's not technically typo-squatting, according to several lawyers who handle Internet issues.

The method is spelled out in a patent application filed by a Vancouver businessman named Robert Seeman, who Ham says is his partner in the venture and who also serves as chief adviser at Reinvent Technology...

Ham won't reveal specifics but says Agoga receives "in the ballpark" of 8 million unique visitors per month...

Click here to read the complete story

"A disservice to Cameroon"
Like most deals that African government officials sign with business interests in the West, the typo-squatting deal is not such a sweet one for Cameroon, even though a handful of individuals might be reaping huge benefits.

As one blogger pointed out back in February, Cameroon could legally use the .cm error to generate legitimate funds destined for internet development in the country:

Setting aside the ethical issue with basically typo-squatting the entire .com domain space, this could be a great way for a poor African nation to raise some money. However, they could easily boost their revenue by building customized landing pages for the most frequently accessed domains. For example, amazon.cm should either redirect to the Amazon.com affiliate links or a page targeted towards ecommerce. I can’t even imagine how much money they are leaving on the table. The folks at NameView.com, who appear to be providing the landing pages, are doing them a huge disservice here.

Even more critical has been Enow Ebot Godwill, a Cameroonian performance analyst based in Denmark, whose analysis of the Camtel deal has been widely distributed on the Internet in the past couple of days:

"If CAMTEL can make money from people mistyping their domains, I'm all for it. The problem that I have is that the situation has led to a perverse effect with CAMTEL making NO EFFORT to manage the .CM registry and promote a real development of the Internet in Cameroon. The "quick buck" mentality has prevailed once again. Well known Cameroon-centric websites such as Cameroon-info.net, postnewsline.com, camerounlink.net, camfoot.com, and dozens of others who are the real actors of Cameroon's presence on the Internet are priced out of their own country's .CM which costs a whopping $400 to $800/year while one can register a .COM name for less than $10 or even get it free with hosting...

As a result, the .CM domain is virtually absent in cyberspace, just as if Cameroon didn't even exist! The reality is that, with CAMTEL making money from unregistered .CM domains, it has no incentive to increase the number of registered .CM domain names. The majority of emails originating and terminating in Cameroon are hosted on .FR, .COM and other registries because no alternative is being developed in the country. Again, when you redo the math, the cost in bandwidth to the country for email traffic hosted outside far outweighs any gain CAMTEL might have from its .CM shenanigans.

This literally means that the shameless sale of Cameroonian patrimony has extended to cyberspace the same way other Cameroonian assets are being often ILLEGALLY disposed of by those in charge of developing them. In the meantime there is no serious Internet policy in Cameroon more than 15 years after the creation of the world-wide-web.

Definitely another black eye for Cameroon...

Comments

[No S&*T]

Living up to the deserved title of the most corrupt country in the universe. The plane crashes point at the most inept country in 10 universies.

[Kelly]

Go to www.SCNCforsoutherncameroons.net

[Ernest V.]

As a Cameroonian IT professional, I find it distasteful that someone is allowed to come to my country and take over a TLD simply because they have the money to buy off officials. Mr. Ham who is so disrespectful goes on to say he will only visit the nation if the president invites him. He’s is however happy to make millions from Cameroon and give nothing to the people in return.

In many other countries it would be near impossible or illegal to buy a national domain unless you were a legal resident or citizen let alone become such a monopoly in what Mr. Ham describes as "a small part of our operation".

The average Cameroonian cannot afford a .CM domain name because they cost between $300 well over $1,000 per year in some cases, while one can easily get a .com, .ca or .co.uk extension for less than $10 today.

It is no doubt that shoddy deals like this have kept prices high so much that 90% or more Cameroonians will never own or operate a .CM domain name.

Senior Cameroonian government officials, diplomats, and business executives, etc, use yahoo, hotmal and other free webmail services which carry a huge risks because of confidential national issues being hosted on these free webmail services. Local ISPs cannot justify forking out the insane prices for their own national domain names.

Could you imagine the average American paying $300 to $1,000 or more for a domain name per year? How many would host websites today or have an online business. The average Cameroonian resident earns less than $100 month, and given the impact of the Internet as tool for empowerment, Mr. Ham is providing a disservice to the people of Cameroon and other similarly exploited nation. You can own a 10million dollar SUN mainframe and best looking website on earth, but if you don’t have a domain name to pull in the traffic, then it’s all worth nothing.

When I read a statement like “He won't disclose how much he pays to the government of Cameroon, whose officials could not be reached for comment.”, I get a sick feeling in my stomach because these are the kind people who are holding back Internet development back in Cameroon and there’s no moral justification for this. They know they can go in pay corrupt officials with total disregard for the citizenry.
There are thousands of frustrated Cameroonian technology entrepreneurs like me who are not even granted any audience with our national leaders to engage or participate in national growth and development from an Internet standpoint, yet people like Mr. Ham’s lap dogs are received like royalty. We have extremely talented Cameroonian IT professionals and I personally know many who have tried to work to improve the domain registration process, drive down costs and improve the service but attempts have fallen on deaf ears, most likely because of private deals signed with people like Mr. Ham.

Mr. Ham can rejoice in his millions but he should understand the short to long term impact of his “investments” in Cameroon as small as they may seem to him. How can anyone own a patent on a nation’s TLD or what he calls his “Cameroon trick”?

The growth of developing nations isn’t always hampered by some Oil company’s waste dump in local rivers or some Blood diamond price fixer. People like Mr. Ham have a moral obligation to make their activities transparent and not under the table deals that affect millions of Cameroonian lives. I would love to see him give something back to the Cameroonian community.

[SJ]

People have the leaders they deserve.

[Hammer time]

Choice of Punishment for these asses:

This

OR

This

OR

This

Ham, or whatever his name is, we cannot blame. So called leaders should know that imperialists and rogues would do what they must.

Seriously, the only way they can redeem themselves is by making the domain names available to citizens at $5 maximum a pop, to encourage business growth. Oh! I forgot one punishment.

THIS

[Sjefke]

sCamtel

[Fon]

Ernest V,
Do you blame your dull and corrupt Cameroonian authorities or Mr.Ham? What crime has Ham committed.
If you have an opportunity to strike such a deal in another country, tell me if you will not do it.
It is a shame to those who manage that country.

[Veloua]

Fon,
true most of the blame should be attributed to the managers of the country. But again, it just shows the ruthless and distasteful business mind of Mr. Ham who not only strikes the deal of his life with one of the "poor" countries on the universe, but goes further to act arrogant and corky about it.

[Etahnam]

This does sound distateful, but think about it: our knowledge of this deal is quite accidental thanks to CNN. How many other shoddy deals are under the table? By the way, what role did the IT specialists in Cameroon (who incidentally studied in technologically advanced countries) play in this CM and Ham recipe? What has been their contribution to the advancement of the passion which is supposed to be theirs? Yes, there is foul play. Unfortunately, there are no straight people standing and if you ask me, this is just the tip of an immense iceberg.

Solution? Erm...erm... privatise Cameroon! (For those who still have a sense of humour)

[Paul]

Reading articles like this about domain exploiters makes me sick. It is especially sad how the journalist has woven in a story of Ham’s faith (in the original CNN article). The section on Cameroon (.cm) is worrying too. That business men from 1st world countries are still exploiting the wealth of 3rd world countries. The same sins revisited in digital form.

[zamzam]

If we had real leaders, they would speak North American to the likes of Ham. The North American phrase in question is : "Go f%ck yourself.

Ppple like Inoni could not possibly be deceived. They know the score. They have lived in the west for long periods and gone to school there. Why do they dishonor us so? Africans are so embroiled in day to day struggle, but they need to muster the energy to bring these "leaders" to bear.

[Abong]

As a Cameroonian IT expert in Finland, I see this as one of the most disgusting thing we are experiencing now. The government can not allow a dishonest man come in and destroy what is supposed to be one of the most vital identities of the country and even go ahead to make fun about it.

This is an insult to all Cameroonian especially to those of us who work in this field. the .CM is like our national ID on the net and if all people can think about it is its relation with "scammers" like Ham, then the government need to rethink. I thought Inoni is an educated man but reading this article I starting asking a lot of questions.

[Pat from California]

The people responsible for this should be shot and all asset confiscated. This is treason. I can't believe this. Here we are working our ass of to build something so that we can go back home and implement something via the internet, and one stupid or a group of incompetent official decide to sell our domain name for cheap cache. I hate this.

[Busby SEO Test]

they must be more aware, now they really know

[Betty]

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