The UN Gives Facebook Iranian Domain Name

The United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Organisation ordered the owner of Facebook.ir to hand the domain over. The UN said they took these measures because the owner Majid Karimian Ghannad registered the domain name in “bad faith”. After being told to transfer the Iranian based domain over to Facebook, Mr. Ghannad tried to stall the process and said that he was using the domain name to sell a book. The UN completely rejected his statement.

The ironic thing about this entire situation is that the Iranian government has actually blocked access to the Facebook social networking website. Unless this changes in the near future, Facebook will not have the ability to be accessed directly by the Iranian people. To circumvent network filters, some Iranians are using proxy sites based outside of there local region.

In addition to this Facebook has deployed a Farsi version of its popular website. Some say that the new version of the site was rushed out to help the Iranians communicate better with others that speak there native tongue. Engineer, Eric Kwan who worked on the Persian version of Facebook confirmed “the site had been rushed out in the wake of the disputed Iranian elections.”

One of the legal powers that the United Nation’s World Intellectual Property Organisation has is the power to contest domain ownership. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers granted the organisation with this legal right.