By Jose Kavi
New Delhi, Jan 13, 2020: The controversy over the ownership of Asia’s largest Church news agency has been resolved with the intervention of an international body.
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the domain name dispute service provider, on January 10 decided to transfer the domains — ucanews.com and uca.news — to a Hong Kong based company.
The ucanews.com was the original domain of Union of Catholic Asian News or UCA News, launched in 1979 in Hong Kong. The other one, uca.news was started by the agency’s former executive director Bangkok-based Peter Monthienvichienchai. The Thai Catholic layman started the site after the UCAN Board on September 30, 2019, sacked him.
The board then appointed George Iype, a Catholic layperson from India, as the new executive director. Iype’s team relaunched the agency as ucanews.org as Monthienvichienchai refused to hand over the original domain.
However, the Thai national could not run the site as its content management system was with the agency’s IT service provider.
Monthienvichienchai now says the original domain was registered in his name after he took over as the agency’s executive director. He then transferred it to the Thai Church for “safe keeping.”
This was done as UCAN’s operation in Thailand could only exist and receive funding from donor organizations with the acknowledgement and endorsement of the local church, he explained to Matters India in an email on January 13.
He also said he started the new site uca.news to fill the gap in news coverage during the last quarter of 2019 that saw drastic changes in the agency’s administrative structures.
“It was clear during that period that, while uca.news social media platforms managed to reach 3.5 million people and received more than 1.3 million engagements, there was still confusion regarding the identity of uca.news vs ucanews.org,” he added.
The confusion further aggravated during Pope Francis’ visit to Thailand and Japan in last November, Monthienvichienchai added,
“The organization that held the domain ucanews.com is Catholic Social Communications of Thailand, Catholic Bishops Conference of Thailand,” he clarified.
Monthienvichienchai acknowledges the WIPO’s decision to transfer the two domains to the Hong Kong-based UCAN Services Ltd “provides clarity on the situation.”
When contacted, Iype told Matters India: “Yes, WIPO has awarded the verdict in our favor. But we have not yet got the domain in hand. So let us wait for a couple of days.”
Monthienvichienchai says the WIPO panel’s decision to also transfer his domain to his rival is consistent with “our thinking and we have since moved on from the brand and website.”
He rebranded his site on December 31, 2019, as licas.news and began operations on the New Year day.
LiCAS.news, he explains, is short of “Light of Catholics in Asia – Light for the Voiceless” to highlight lay people’s role in fulfilling the mission of the Church in Asia.
“The team at LiCAS.news now looks forward to providing stories to the world with a distinctive voice, to shine the light on the plight of the voiceless and to support the mission of the Church in Asia,” he added.