Saturday, June 07, 2008

BPN 1121 Covenant on Dutch domains

The vice minister for Economic Affairs and the foundation Internet domain registration Netherlands (SIDN) are underwriting a covenant regarding registration and administration of .nl domains.

Presently the foundation has registered more than 2,8 million nl. domains and is the fourth largest country domain in the world. In the Netherlands more than 80 per cent of all domains are .nl domains. The domains are registered and administered by the independent foundation SIDN.

So far the foundation has worked on the principle of self regulation. It has been at the basis of the explosive growth of internet in the Netherlands. The covenant between the government and the SIDN confirms this principle of self-regulation. In the covenant the principles of continuity and sovereignty of the nl. domains have been recorded. Other agreements have been recorded in order to keep the nl domain accessible for internet and e-mail under all circumstances. The covenant is the result of talks between the government and SIDN started in 2005.

SIDN has been under fire recently with the introduction of numeric URLs in the nl domain. A few ISPs had chalked code in order to pick up a large number of numeric URLs. Despite the fact that the handing out of the numeric URLs was on the basis first come, first serve it became clear that most of the numeric URLs were in the hands of a very few ISPs. In the aftermath, the few ISPs were asked to return most of the numeric URLs and they did, completely shocked by the public indignation of their greediness. The returned numeric URLs were handed out in a second round

Blog Posting Number: 1121

Tags: domain, URL,

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