Aarto domain name for sale

Tom Manners

Tom Manners is now a freelance journalist, previously full-time at MyBroadband from 2009 to 2010. Tom focuses on cellular technologies, gadgets, mobile phones and broadcasting....

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The name aarto.co.za was originally registered by the Road Traffic Management Corporation (RTMC), and was used for a website dealing with its administrative adjudication of traffic offences (AARTO) system.

The site was supposed to explain how AARTO, which includes demerit points system, worked, and to allow drivers to use the internet to download forms and make representations.

However in July this year the RTMC lost the name after apparently ignoring repeated requests to pay the required R50 annual fee to co.za domain registrars UniForum.

The name was snapped up by Justice Project South Africa (JPSA), a group set up in 2008 to “root out power abuse in law enforcement”.

JPSA chairman Howard Dembovsky said on Wednesday the body initially used the address as a “tongue-in-cheek” pointer to its site www.greedfines.co.za.

That site says it is dedicated to exposing metro police departments that levy camera speeding fines which boost their coffers “but do absolutely nothing to reduce speeding, enforce traffic laws or protect the public”.

However, Dembovsky said, after a meeting with the RTMC, JPSA pointed the domain name back at the official AARTO website, and had  so far forwarded 4.63 gigabytes of AARTO email.

“Now, after incurring substantial costs in providing email communications between the public and AARTO, as well as providing other services… JPSA which receives no funding to speak of, has decided to sell the domain off to rectify its extremely poor financial situation,” he said.

The auction of the name would be conducted by sealed bids, which  would close on December 30. Details of the process were available on www.aarto.co.za.

Dembovsky told Sapa JPSA had already been offered half a million rand for the name by a caller whose offer appeared genuine, but whose motives might have been “shady”.

He said the project had no objection to selling the name back to the RTMC, and did suggest this to the corporation earlier this month, but had received no response.

He said the RTMC had treated JPSA with “huge contempt” on a range of issues and initiatives JPSA had put forward.

“They patronised us with regard to any true co-operation. There’s been nothing substantive, and that is where we now have a problem.”

Dembovsky said the domain name had a reserve price of half a million rand, but that it was impossible to say how much it was actually worth.

“How much is it worth to the RTMC is another question, since it’s a widely published domain name. It’s on every single form that  they have.”

He said JPSA was run by volunteers, and survived on the trickle of donations listed on its website www.jp-sa.org.

The RTMC, with 148 staff, had an annual operating budget of R166 million, he said.

RTMC spokeswoman Thandi Moya said on Tuesday the corporation had no immediate comment on the auction.

On Wednesday, the AARTO link on the RTMC’s own site led to www.aarto.co.za, which carried details of the auction under the banner: “The ultimate Xmas gift for someone who has (almost) everything!”

Aarto domain name for sale