Iraq Wants .iq TLD

joelt49 writes "According to this USA Today article, via Yahoo! News, Iraq is seeking its own .iq Top-Level Domain (TLD). The Iraqi chairman of the National Communications & Media Commission, Siyamend Othman, said the .IQ domain name would allow Iraqis to stake a 'virtual flag' in the worldwide Internet community while American administrator Paul Bremer said it 'will signal to potential investors that Iraq is rebuilding for a high-technology future.' ICANN refuses to comment on specific applications, including this one."

Comments

...they don't have it already?

[Hobart]

Google indicates there were at least some .IQ domains it spidered...

IANA lists it as being there, and a little digging shows it hosted out of Texas by InfoComCorp, apparently related to Synaptix somehow.

'course, the nameserver looks rather empty. :)

Re:Why Not?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why should any country have a TLD? What do current geographic or historical ethnic boundaries have to do with organizing information on a network?

Why *don't* they have it?

[J'raxis]

Aren't all ISO3166 alpha-2 country codes automatically ccTLDs?

Point to note

[jb.hl.com]

Iraq has no TLD.

The Soviet Union, which may I remind you has been defunct for 13 years, possibly more, has got one, .su.

Hmm....

Free the domain names

[Crayon Kid]

Actually, I expect that at some point in the [distant] future, domain names will be freed from such artificial restriction as TLD's. Then we'll be able to have names like "this.is.my.butt.crack" instead of goatse.cx. And if I wanted to give people those expectations you speak of I'd prepend de. or en. or organize things through the paths on the website. Seriously now, the only thing that does make a difference nowadays is the protocol name in the url (http://). Other than respecting the dots and a certain character set (due to the design of DNS) there shouldn't be restrictions. The TLD's are mostly just a conspiracy to keep control of domain names in the hands of a few chosen ones. What does a certain termination of a domain name mean nowadays anyway? Does .de really mean that the site is German? Sure, some TLDs have restrictions (such as .fr) regarding who can buy them, but it's just the respective TLD authorities playing God. We'd be able to keep things organized without TLDs if we really wanted to.

I'm curious

[megaversal]

I feel that a country should not be allowed to run their ccTLD from outside their country, and by the same token, I don't think people or businesses not affiliated in some way with the country, should be allowed to purchase domains from within that country's ccTLD.

Are there some good reasons why one would want to go against this practice? I realize countries might not have the infrastructure to support running a ccTLD, but I think that's a larger problem... why does the country need an operational TLD if no one can run it? And for my second point.. perhaps revenue is an important reason (the .to and .nu domains come to mind, among others), but I think perhaps in this case, certain restrictions should apply. That's why we have .com, et al... for non-country-aligned domains.

Thoughts?

Sounds like a positive step forward

[jamehec]

A nation's ccTLD is its national identity online. Their domains shouldn't be sold to just anyone. IMO, the guidelines for .fi make for a good set of rules to ensure the ccTLD in question serves the people of the country.

Domain name speculators, look elsewhere. We have enough ccTLDs that have been exploited to death (catch a hint, .ws is for Samoa, NOT WebSite). The new government of Iraq deserves its own online identity. Let them have it.

Call this a troll if you must. 'tis just the way I got it figured, is all.