DNS Structure: Country Code Domains
In addition to the global top-level domains, there are a whole bunch of two-level domains for the different countries of the world. Some of them let people register directly under them as second-level domains, while others have a more deeply nested structure. Some limit registrations to residents of the appropriate country, while others are open worldwide. Much other variation in domain policy exists.
.us -- US Country Domain The United States of America's .us domain is registered via nic.us, and has traditionally been subdivided geographically. Other than a few specialized categories such as community colleges and Native American tribes, most users were supposed to register under their hometown, with domains like yourname.shreveport.la.us, so that what you register is a fourth-level domain under your city (or county), state, and country. These are much cheaper to register than the .com domains (often free, though this varies by locality), but are lengthier. However, these domains might be a good choice if you want your site to be geographically identified. Many people register domains like joeschmoe-of-milwaukee.com where joeschmoe.milwaukee.wi.us would have been more logical. The usual objection is that more users are familiar with .com domains, but that's self-fulfilling; of course people won't be familiar with .us domains if nobody ever uses them, but if lots of people start using them as site addresses, public awareness would follow, and people would become better-educated about the hierarchical structure of the domain name system in general.
However, that structure has now changed -- a new registry provider has been selected by contract of the U.S. Department of Commerce (the winning registry is the same one that runs the new .biz TLD), and they are now offering registrations directly at the second level, like yourname.us. They had a trademark-owners-only sunrise phase (similar to that of the .info TLD, but only for owners of U.S. trademarks, not globally), followed by first-come, first-served registration, for which various registrars took queued requests over the weeks and months preceding that. Names like help.us -- with.us have some "cute" subdomain possibilities, like grow.with.us or fool.around.with.us. But don't try anything ending in "-r.us... the Toys "R" Us people have a very aggressive legal department.
Legislation that recently passed Congress will establish a .kids.us subdomain in which only child-friendly sites can register. No act of Congress, however, was needed for the registrant of protozoa.us to offer subdomains for sites that are safe for protozoans.
Neustar, the company that runs the .us domain, has recently been placed in charge of China's .cn domain as well, and will be throwing that domain open to registrations without any Chinese nexus requirement.
Similarly to .us, Canada had a hierarchical system for its .ca domain, but allowed companies and organizations that are nationwide in scope to register directly under .ca, and province-wide organizations to register within a province subdomain (like .on.ca), instead of making everyone register within a city. In 2000, a new plan liberalized this to allow unlimited registration directly under .ca (as is now being done in .us).
Both .us and .ca require some sort of connection with their respective countries in order to register there. Individuals wishing to register must be either citizens or residents; multinational corporations need to at least have a contact address in the given country.
Countries other than the United States and Canada rarely used geographical hierarchies; they usually, right off the bat, allowed either direct second-level registration or registered at the third level beneath logical subdivisions like .co.uk and .org.uk for commercial and noncommercial sites in the U.K. respectively. They vary a lot as to the degree, if any, of local presence needed for registration by foreigners.
It's not actually necessary for an entity to be a real country in order to have a country code. Antarctica has the .aq domain. Another not-really-a-country with a country code is the Palestinian Authority, with .ps (they used to have a site at gov.ps, but it hasn't worked lately, maybe because of all the problems they've been having at their headquarters these days). The European Union is about to inaugurate a .eu domain. There's a big debate going on about whether to terminate the still-existent .su domain for the Soviet Union. Other Country Codes
Some country-code domains are open to registrations from people having no connection with that country, and this can be used as a revenue source by small countries with little need for the namespace domestically. Tonga (.to) is one such domain that's available to people worldwide. Turkmenistan made its .tm domain available internationally, with particular appeal to companies with trademarks ("tm"), but registrations have been put on hold after the Turkmenistan government objected to some "obscene" domains being registered. More recently, Tuvalu's .tv domain was sold (actually leased for a 10-year period) to an American company for millions of dollars, and they're now auctioning off the most desirable names there rather than just letting anyone grab them cheaply like other registrars generally have done. There are similar registries at .fm and .am, belonging to the Federated States of Micronesia and Armenia respectively.
.tk, belonging to the island nation of Tokelau, is giving away "free" domains (supposedly in keeping with the tribal values of that island where everything is shared), but there are lots of catches attached, and many of the "good names" are reserved to be registered at a price.
Since some of the country codes are two-letter words in English or other languages, this has been taken advantage of by various people who have set up "redirection services" under addresses like go.to, here.is, i.am, start.at, or for Spanish-speaking people, pagina.de and espacio.de. The idea is to follow such an address with your site name: http://go.to/mysite, which is set up to redirect to your real site address. Many of these addresses are available free, but you're at the mercy of the service that provides the redirect, which could go out of business or impose a really annoying popup ad on visitors.
The television networks and other things that get .tv domains could be in trouble in a few years -- the island of Tuvalu is in the process of sinking into the ocean due to global warming, and its population already has plans to evacuate. If the country stops existing, then that will open the debate about whether its domain should be deleted, just as that debate is now progressing over the .su (Soviet Union) domain. Thus, .tv registrants should probably keep up on what happens to .su as an advance warning about what might happen to them. DNS Server Requirements
The global TLDs (.com, etc.) require two DNS server addresses in the registration record (a primary and a secondary), but the registrars don't actually check that those servers respond to requests for the domain; you can get away with registering domains with anybody's server in the record, though they won't actually work unless whoever's in charge of that server sets up the DNS over there. Country code domains can vary in their requirements. The Mexican domain registrar, for instance (.mx), requires only one DNS server address, but actually checks it during the registration process to make sure it responds to requests for that domain, so you need to get your hosting provider to set up DNS before you register the domain. This may be one of the reasons there is less cybersquatting and other domain abuse in the .mx domain than in the global ones (but then again it may just be that cybersquatters and domain abusers, even when they're Mexican, don't care as much about .mx addresses as .com ones...)
Conflicts
As with other domain names, there have been some conflicts over country code domains.
.us -- US Country Domain The United States of America's .us domain is registered via nic.us, and has traditionally been subdivided geographically. Other than a few specialized categories such as community colleges and Native American tribes, most users were supposed to register under their hometown, with domains like yourname.shreveport.la.us, so that what you register is a fourth-level domain under your city (or county), state, and country. These are much cheaper to register than the .com domains (often free, though this varies by locality), but are lengthier. However, these domains might be a good choice if you want your site to be geographically identified. Many people register domains like joeschmoe-of-milwaukee.com where joeschmoe.milwaukee.wi.us would have been more logical. The usual objection is that more users are familiar with .com domains, but that's self-fulfilling; of course people won't be familiar with .us domains if nobody ever uses them, but if lots of people start using them as site addresses, public awareness would follow, and people would become better-educated about the hierarchical structure of the domain name system in general.
However, that structure has now changed -- a new registry provider has been selected by contract of the U.S. Department of Commerce (the winning registry is the same one that runs the new .biz TLD), and they are now offering registrations directly at the second level, like yourname.us. They had a trademark-owners-only sunrise phase (similar to that of the .info TLD, but only for owners of U.S. trademarks, not globally), followed by first-come, first-served registration, for which various registrars took queued requests over the weeks and months preceding that. Names like help.us -- with.us have some "cute" subdomain possibilities, like grow.with.us or fool.around.with.us. But don't try anything ending in "-r.us... the Toys "R" Us people have a very aggressive legal department.
Legislation that recently passed Congress will establish a .kids.us subdomain in which only child-friendly sites can register. No act of Congress, however, was needed for the registrant of protozoa.us to offer subdomains for sites that are safe for protozoans.
Neustar, the company that runs the .us domain, has recently been placed in charge of China's .cn domain as well, and will be throwing that domain open to registrations without any Chinese nexus requirement.
Similarly to .us, Canada had a hierarchical system for its .ca domain, but allowed companies and organizations that are nationwide in scope to register directly under .ca, and province-wide organizations to register within a province subdomain (like .on.ca), instead of making everyone register within a city. In 2000, a new plan liberalized this to allow unlimited registration directly under .ca (as is now being done in .us).
Both .us and .ca require some sort of connection with their respective countries in order to register there. Individuals wishing to register must be either citizens or residents; multinational corporations need to at least have a contact address in the given country.
Countries other than the United States and Canada rarely used geographical hierarchies; they usually, right off the bat, allowed either direct second-level registration or registered at the third level beneath logical subdivisions like .co.uk and .org.uk for commercial and noncommercial sites in the U.K. respectively. They vary a lot as to the degree, if any, of local presence needed for registration by foreigners.
It's not actually necessary for an entity to be a real country in order to have a country code. Antarctica has the .aq domain. Another not-really-a-country with a country code is the Palestinian Authority, with .ps (they used to have a site at gov.ps, but it hasn't worked lately, maybe because of all the problems they've been having at their headquarters these days). The European Union is about to inaugurate a .eu domain. There's a big debate going on about whether to terminate the still-existent .su domain for the Soviet Union. Other Country Codes
Some country-code domains are open to registrations from people having no connection with that country, and this can be used as a revenue source by small countries with little need for the namespace domestically. Tonga (.to) is one such domain that's available to people worldwide. Turkmenistan made its .tm domain available internationally, with particular appeal to companies with trademarks ("tm"), but registrations have been put on hold after the Turkmenistan government objected to some "obscene" domains being registered. More recently, Tuvalu's .tv domain was sold (actually leased for a 10-year period) to an American company for millions of dollars, and they're now auctioning off the most desirable names there rather than just letting anyone grab them cheaply like other registrars generally have done. There are similar registries at .fm and .am, belonging to the Federated States of Micronesia and Armenia respectively.
.tk, belonging to the island nation of Tokelau, is giving away "free" domains (supposedly in keeping with the tribal values of that island where everything is shared), but there are lots of catches attached, and many of the "good names" are reserved to be registered at a price.
Since some of the country codes are two-letter words in English or other languages, this has been taken advantage of by various people who have set up "redirection services" under addresses like go.to, here.is, i.am, start.at, or for Spanish-speaking people, pagina.de and espacio.de. The idea is to follow such an address with your site name: http://go.to/mysite, which is set up to redirect to your real site address. Many of these addresses are available free, but you're at the mercy of the service that provides the redirect, which could go out of business or impose a really annoying popup ad on visitors.
The television networks and other things that get .tv domains could be in trouble in a few years -- the island of Tuvalu is in the process of sinking into the ocean due to global warming, and its population already has plans to evacuate. If the country stops existing, then that will open the debate about whether its domain should be deleted, just as that debate is now progressing over the .su (Soviet Union) domain. Thus, .tv registrants should probably keep up on what happens to .su as an advance warning about what might happen to them. DNS Server Requirements
The global TLDs (.com, etc.) require two DNS server addresses in the registration record (a primary and a secondary), but the registrars don't actually check that those servers respond to requests for the domain; you can get away with registering domains with anybody's server in the record, though they won't actually work unless whoever's in charge of that server sets up the DNS over there. Country code domains can vary in their requirements. The Mexican domain registrar, for instance (.mx), requires only one DNS server address, but actually checks it during the registration process to make sure it responds to requests for that domain, so you need to get your hosting provider to set up DNS before you register the domain. This may be one of the reasons there is less cybersquatting and other domain abuse in the .mx domain than in the global ones (but then again it may just be that cybersquatters and domain abusers, even when they're Mexican, don't care as much about .mx addresses as .com ones...)
Conflicts
As with other domain names, there have been some conflicts over country code domains.
posted by Burn at 6:51 AM
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