Northern Ireland's "politically neutral" domain

[Gerrit]

Probably already known to some of you, but here goes...


Our province of Northern Ireland has launched a solution for the political/sectarian problem of having to choose between .CO.UK and .IE (with the risk of losing half of your potential customers)

.CO.NI has been launched as the "politically neutral" extention for Northern Ireland.

The registry sells subdomain of the CO.NI domain which they own (.NI is the extention for the Middle-American country Nicaragua) but has made an official agreement with the Nicaraguan registry who have granted permission to brand .CO.NI as a Northern Ireland extention.

the registry (www.nic.co.ni) asks a ridiculous amount of money (60 GBP a year = approx 90 Euro/annum !) for a subdomain, though with several hundreds of .CO.NI domains sold their attempt is not unsuccesful. Even a few companies use .CO.NI as main extention for their website.



Seems a waste of money to me. I understand one wants to avoid the political aspect of business in this province, but why not going for a neutral extenion like .COM or .NET, or why not registering both the .CO.UK and .IE variant?

But, very creative attempt of these folks, I wonder how long this .CO.NI will survive...

 

[kev]

if it succeeds it should pave the way for english, welsh and scottish extensions hopefully!

 

[The Engineer]

kevmacmeh, just wondering if business's in Scotland use the .sc extension at all.
Even though its for the Seychelles.
sc-Scotland , sounds good to me.

 

[Gerrit]

I agree with that. .SC could stand for Scotland easily.

However, I think we have more need for neutral domains than England, Wales or Scotland. You all know of the troubles we have here in Northern Ireland. The other UK parts don't have problems that serious and that go back so long.

if a local business here uses .IE he risks to lose all protestant customers, and vice-versa if he uses .CO.UK
So i do reckon there is a need for a Northern Irish alternative. However, I have doubts if .CO.NI can succeed: 60 £ per annum for a subdomain, that just doesn't sound right. Buying both .IE and .CO.UK would cost less than that.

Very ironic by the way that the home nations have no own domains (not even .eng.uk, .sco.uk, .wal.uk and .ni.uk) and have to rely on subdomain providers (like .CO.NI in this case) while the very tiny Isle of Man has its own official ccTLD apart from the .UK extention!

 

[kev]

it was originally marketed to scottish businesses and a press release from the government encouraged them not to register them for some reason.

There has been a lot of local elections recently and the SNP are growing in popularity (want scotland to break away from UK http://www.snp.org/independence/why/). I think it will happen in the next few years and we will get an extension at long last. If pitcairn island got one (population of 47), then us scots should get one!

There has been talk of a .scot but that is similar to the .cat and will be for gaelic/scots speakers i think, and will not be available for general registrations

 

[The Engineer]

What about .ul for Ulster, isn't that neutral.

 

[kev]

i thought ulster was just a region of northern ireland. I have been to NI once when i was sailing and went to Ballycastle (its so different from rest of uk i thought...lol).

 

[Gerrit]

Not entirely neutral.

Ulster contains 9 counties. Six counties form Northern Ireland, the other three are part of the Republic of Ireland.

Ulster is far from a neutral term for this province. Mainly Unionists (= people who want to keep the union with the UK) use the term 'Ulster', whereas Nationalists (= those who seek affiliation with the Republic Ireland) tend to say 'The Six Counties' or 'Six occupied Counties'.

Ulster is mainly a Unionist term. Neutrally speaking "Northern Ireland" is as close as you'll get I'm afraid...

Ulster has 9 counties:
* Monaghan, Cavan, Donegal (all part of the Republic of Ireland/Eire)
* Down, Antrim, Armagh, Londonderry, Tyrone, Fermanagh (they form the British-governed Northern Ireland)

it was originally marketed to scottish businesses and a press release from the government encouraged them not to register them for some reason.

There has been a lot of local elections recently and the SNP are growing in popularity (want scotland to break away from UK http://www.snp.org/independence/why/). I think it will happen in the next few years and we will get an extension at long last. If pitcairn island got one (population of 47), then us scots should get one!

There has been talk of a .scot but that is similar to the .cat and will be for gaelic/scots speakers i think, and will not be available for general registrations

Pitcairn has its own UN-extention because it qualifies for that as it is entirely remote (every nation more than X kilometers/miles away from the homeland can qualify for that extention, in the same way unpopulated islands like Bouvet, Jan Mayen and South Georgia all have extentions)

Pitcairn also has its own parliament (half of the population is in it), it's officially the world's smallest democracy and has a semi-independent status much like the Isle of Man or like the Channel Islands.

 

[kev]

That is a ridiculous rule :imho: . Scotland has a 5,000,000 population and its own government but doesnt qualify? So that rule means that somewhere like Skye and Mull (islands off scotland) qualify but the whole of scotland doesnt count! :hehe:

 

[Gerrit]

Skye is quite close to the mainland, Pitcairn is several thousands miles away from London. I think the Shetland islands would be doubtful, but may also just qualify for an own extention as they're quite far off coast (.sheep may be a good extention for them :D)

Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and England are seen as all parts of the UK, whereas Pitcairn, Isle of Man, Channel Islands, Gibraltar, St Helena and Bermuda are all seen as semi-independent overseas territories outside of the regular UK structure.

 

[The Engineer]

That is a ridiculous rule :imho: . Scotland has a 5,000,000 population and its own government but doesnt qualify? So that rule means that somewhere like Skye and Mull (islands off scotland) qualify but the whole of scotland doesnt count! :hehe:

Maybe you need a decent football team to qualify! :hehe:

 

[kev]

maybe ur right. i follow dundee united and we ended the season with 8 straight defeats giving a total of 1 win in 15 games. I still love them to bits :hehe:


Saint Kilda is an island (which i sailed to) which is 100 kms away from scotland approx so that must qualify. .sk should get started! Mmmm..i think slovakia already has it

 

[dhscott]

Scotland is part of the UK, so is Northern Ireland. Now the Isle of Man is not part of the UK, nor is Jersey, Guernsey, The Falkland Islands, South Georgia and Sandwich Islands etc. They fall under the Protectorate of the UK. That's why they get their own extensions.

Same for .cc in the USA I think, protectorate

Protectorate, a nice way of saying "I own you" but without actually owning you :hehe:

 

[Gerrit]

Cocos Islands are part of Australia, not USA. So the .CC extention is 'owned' indirectly by the Aussies.

As for St Kilda: it has the status of scottish territory without special semi-independency so it's part of UK. However, looks like a unique travel destination.

 

[dhscott]

Cocos Islands are part of Australia, not USA. So the .CC extention is 'owned' indirectly by the Aussies.

As for St Kilda: it has the status of scottish territory without special semi-independency so it's part of UK. However, looks like a unique travel destination.

Apologies to the Aussies!

 

[kev]

you learn something every day! Good info in this thread