Auction of Singapore leader's domain name goes nowhere

SINGAPORE: A Cybersquatter auctioning off the Internet domain name of Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew is out of luck so far, a report said. No takers have yet emerged for the website address www.leekuanyew.com, which is being auctioned on Yahoo!'s Singapore portal by a seller named `deepakchugani'. It has a starting price of 25,000 Singapore dollars ($14,450) and bids have a deadline of late Thursday.

The auction site had earlier posted a photo of Lee, but it had been removed by Thursday, the Straits Times newspaper said. Yahoo! Singapore general manager Christina Teo told the daily that anyone was free to auction any web address on the site. The Straits Times traced the registration of Lee's domain name to a local company, Net-Island IT Solutions, whose website was still under construction. Cybersquatting is the practice of registering well-known names as Internet addresses and selling them for a hefty price.

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