What extentions do unrecognised states use?

[Gerrit]

Lately I've been reading some quite interesting articles about the likes of Northern Cyprus, Transnistria, ... States that are unrecognised by the UN (and thus don't have an own domain extention) but that de facto function fully independently from the country they're supposedly "occupying" part of. I was wondering what domain extentions are used in those places and if there wouldn't be a market for those places.


Kosovo = no own extention yet, I assume .rs (Serbia) is not done. Do they use the Albanian extention or do they have some other ccTLD that works out for them?

Northern Cyprus = the Turkish registry created the .nc.tr for them, but so far no registrations have been taking place for the public, only governmental sites use the .nc.tr extention. Because in Turkish the name of the breakaway state has the CC initials in it, .cc is relatively popular in Northern Cyprus.

Transnistria = de jure part of Moldova, de facto an independent small country which mainly has good ties with Russia. Nonetheless I've seen local sites using .md even when most people abstain from everything to do with Moldova. I would assume .ru is used as well?

Abkhazia = ???

Nagorno-Karabakh = de jure part of Azerbaijan but not sure if .az is used there. Not sure really.

South Ossetia = ???


Is there any type of extention widely used in these places?

I am asking solely out of interest, not to start a political debate (if people find that necessary or informative, that should be in the lounge... let's keep this topic domainname-related only :tu

 

[Kate]

I think they tend to use .com/.org.
Example: Republika e Kosovës - Kuvendi - Ballina
'Unrecognised states' are usually small and don't need hundreds of domain registrations

 

[Coopey]

Hmm. I think my phone isn't posting as I answered this earlier...?

I was going to say .com as Kate just has.

The only ones I've really seen were the half-hearted attempts to market .sc for Scotland (but you probably remember that one!) where I think a warning was issued to businesses about the true nature of the domain. I've heard of .ni being used for Nor'n Ir'n (Northern Ireland) but not seen an example.
When I lived in Wales the three main extensions you would see advertised on English and Welsh media were .co.uk, .com and .tv (in that order) with the odd .org.uk too.
(As an aside, I am opposed the .cym project as I think Wales should hold out for a country code rather than a .cat-esque culture code, but that's a personal opinion).
I know some Euskardi/Basque were apparently quick to adopt .eu for obvious reasons.

 

[malcarada]

I know the Euskardi/Basque were apparently quick to adopt .eu for obvious reasons.

I wonder where you got your information from?

Certainly not from the Eurid statistics (Statistics | EURid)

But the most troubling thing it is what those obvious reasons are, it escapes my mind... maybe I am the only one on this forum who can't see those reasons, some specifics might help to clear it up.

 

[mrjohn]

I'd suspect a lot of states would lean toward their sponsor state or a state with which they have an affinity. For example, Northern Cyprus favors using .nc.tr underneath Turkey's TLD. Nagorno-Karabakh has a nkr.am under Armenia's TLD.

Abkhazia, on the other hand, seems to favor .org. This, I suspect, is because their sponsor state, Russia, walks a very narrow line where they are afraid of the perception of annexation. Transnistria and South Ossetia follow the same rules (.org), so I think this is coming from higher up in the Russian foreign / intelligence apparatus.

Kosovo is another example. The Kosovars seems to favor .net with a scattering of .org also. Their sponsor, Albania, is in no position to piss off their opponents (Serbia and Russia).

Western Sahara (admittedly a non-functioning, non-recognized state), seems to favor .info. Although, considering that like six people live in Western Sahara, it's very possible they missed the .com, .net and .org rushes by some margin. Also, I could see Morocco (their opponent) being savvy enough to buy up the big three TLDs.

OTOH, the Palestinians have their own TLD, .ps. Besides them and Taiwan, I don't think there is another non-independent, de facto state that has their own TLD. Both are really odd cases, because they basically have TLDs because the world knows what the deal is where neither can declare de jure indpendence and seek recognition without being on the wrong end of a war.

And just to toss one more oddball in there, the phyiscally stateless but widely diplomatically recognized Order of Malta (the modern version of the Knights Hospitaler) favor .org. Their recognition is considered along the lines of the UN.

The UN uses UN.org for all their business.

There is a proposal to grant .health to the World Health Organization. It's been sitting in a bin for more than a decade now.

I think that's as exhaustive of a rundown as you'll find anywhere.

 

[Coopey]

I wonder where you got your information from?

I have changed 'the' to 'some' to make my statement more accurate, I may have given an impression that all the Euskadi went out and bought .eu versions of their names.

On visiting Bilbao I was surprised with the amount of .eu and .net websites I saw advertised, more than both .com and .es, so the statement is based on personal experience.
I thought I had a .pdf sitting around somewhere that I had found following a link from Wikipedia, but Mac OS X's 'Spotlight' isn't much use in finding it, sorry.
You can try throwing random Euskadi words in to Google search and see that there are quite a few sites, although there are a few Spanish results in there too so YMMV.

But the most troubling thing it is what those obvious reasons are, it escapes my mind... maybe I am the only one on this forum who can't see those reasons, some specifics might help to clear it up.

Euskadi seemed pretty obvious to me, but then to be fair it took a few minutes for it to 'click' when in Bilbao; I first thought they were emphasising their [Euskadi] own cross-borderness (being as they are split across Spain and France). And then felt a bit dull when I realised they were using it for Euskara and/or Euskadi.
.eu may well have been their ccTLD were they independent when ccTLDs were being initially assigned, and it already is their language code.

Certainly not from the Eurid statistics (Statistics | EURid)

As it is an unrecognised state without its own ccTLD it wouldn't be on EURid's list. You'll notice that Wales, Scotland, Breizh, Cataluña, Galicia, occupied (Northern) Cyprus and many others are missing too.
The numbers are probably a chunk of the Spanish registrations and a small number of the French.


They're after their own language/cultural TLD too: .eus. Funnily, I had hoped that looking at the links page there would be more evidence to back up my claim, but nearly all the sites are .orgs! Ha.

 

[malcarada]

Euskadi seemed pretty obvious to me

No it is not, that is the Spanish name, the correct name is Euskal Herria. EH

You can Google this easily.

 

[Gerrit]

MrJohn, have you ever seen any active site using .nkr.am ? I never heard about this one.

Also, have you ever seen an .info site actually developped by someone in the Polisario-ruled part of the Western Sahara? (the Moroccan-ruled part will likely use .ma)

You are right about the sponsor states usually providing a domain, but not everywhere it is widely available for citizens. For example in Northern Cyprus, .nc.tr is indeed created by Turkey intended to be used in Northern Cyprus, but so far only governmental sites use it and no registrations for the citizens' own sites is possible yet. Hence why the everyday citizen (= not working for the government) of Northern Cyprus cannot get .nc.tr and thus uses other alternatives, .cc being relatively well used as the Turkish name of the state can be abbreviated and this 4 character abbreviation contains CC.

Transnistria is an oddity because, despite their wish to break away from Moldova, some Transnistrian websites still use .md

Somaliland is another de facto independent yet unrecognised state, not sure what they use.



Actually, I live in Cataluña, and I see .cat websites advertised everywhere. The extention is used alongside .es and .com here, but most organisations that aren't active in other sides of Spain will prefer .cat over .es. I am not a fan of .cat however, because if we start assigning domains per language as well there will soon be so many extentions that one cannot see the forest from the trees anymore. Also, the registration rules for .cat are quite odd, they require the website to be at least partially in Catalan ; I wonder how they check that and what they do with domains that are parked or used for email only? Anyway, I don't like the .cat too much so without choosing a side politically, I'll stick to .es if I wish to register a domain for a "local project".

 

[malcarada]

Also, the registration rules for .cat are quite odd, they require the website to be at least partially in Catalan ;

That stops foreign domain speculators such as yourself from buying and selling .cat the same way people do with .me/.to/.cc where those extensions have lost all kind of meaning, which was the reason why there were created in the first place.

I wonder how they check that and what they do with domains that are parked or used for email only?

There is no need to check every single website, all that is needed is someone reporting your site for breaking the registration rules.

Anyway, I don't like the .cat too much so without choosing a side politically, I'll stick to .es if I wish to register a domain for a "local project".

.es domains sell quite well in Sedo, that is an excellent choice of TLD for domain flipping and parked pages.

 

[Gerrit]

That stops foreign domain speculators such as yourself from buying and selling .cat the same way people do with .me/.to/.cc where those extensions have lost all kind of meaning, which was the reason why there were created in the first place.

.es domains sell quite well in Sedo, that is an excellent choice of TLD for domain flipping and parked pages.

Just to make something clear: I am not a Spanish citizen but I do live in Spain, in Cataluña even. I am an expat in Spain ; that means I may be not a local in the strict meaning but also no foreign domain speculator. I do live in Spain and in the Catalan speaking region so if I were to develop a site for let's say the local soccer team, it would make sense to consider .cat ; even when I'm an expat, the fact that I live here in Spain sets my case apart from those foreigners who have no interest in Spanish domains other than reselling.

Anyways, I think creating .cat was a dangerous precedent. Not for political reasons but because then every minority language (Frisian, Euskadi, Irish Gaelic, Welsh, etc) can ask its own extention. There's already so many hardly used extentions that I don't see the need for creating even more. Providing real countries (even when they're not UN recognised) like Northern Cyprus or Transnistria with an own ccTLD would make more sense to me personally. And this is just generally speaking, without making any comment on the Spain-vs-Catalunya issue (I'll happily keep that can of worms closed and enjoy the fact that people don't expect expats to choose a side )

 

[malcarada]

Just to make something clear: I am not a Spanish citizen but I do live in Spain, in Cataluña even.

You don't need to live in Spain or even be a Spanish citizen in order to have a .cat website. You can be a Chinese citizen living in Hawaii and do it perfectly, but you would have to spell Catalunya in your website instead of Cataluña like you do on this thread.