European Cultural & Linguistic Internet Domains
The phenomenal expansion of the Internet created a large community of 1,5 billion users worldwide. To further promote and enrich its use, Internet has to be made more accessible for all communities, including through the global name space. By introducing in 2006 the .cat, specific to the Catalan community, working on introducing Internationalized Domain Names under a fast track system, and encouraging international representation within its own organization, ICANN has demonstrated its understanding of the need for diversity in the Internet. In order to continue this effort, we suggest that ICANN should take in consideration the specific needs and constraints of new cultural and linguistic based TLD (clTLD) applicants.
The aim of such TLD is to make the name space of Internet more accessible to our communities and promote the diversity of contents. The example of .cat shows that such registry would operate a modest number of domain names (35,000) compared to commercial gTLD or even well developed ccTLD. Nonetheless, the .cat has demonstrated its economical viability and added value to the name space, given the high percentage of use per domain.
Considering the public interest of Cultural & Linguistic TLD, we therefore suggest that ICANN recognized this specific category of applicants within the Community-Based-designation.
