Legal Research

Top Level Domain For Quebec?

By Simon Fodden

Olivier Charbonneau, bibliothécaire professionnel et chercheur à l?Université Concordia, and blogger behind the excellent CultureLibre.ca, posts about a petition started by Le député provincial de Mercier à Montréal, Daniel Turp, aiming to persuade ICANN to grant Quebec the top level domain designation “dot qc.”

Apparently the Deputy discovered that the semi-autonomous regions of Catalan and Greenland have their own dot suffixes.

The full list of top level domains is available on the IANA site. .GL, Greenland’s code is listed as a “country code”; while .CAT is said to be “sponsored” and “Reserved for the Catalan linguistic and cultural community.” The only other regional “sponsored” domain is .ASIA, which is “Restricted to the Pan-Asia and Asia Pacific community.”

IANA — the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority — is operated by and carries out the policies set by ICANN — the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which says it is “a not-for-profit partnership of people from all over the world dedicated to keeping the Internet secure, stable and interoperable.” ICANN is taking steps to gain autonomy from the US Commerce Department, which currently oversees its operations.

Full post as published by Slaw.ca on April 21, 2008 (boomark / email).