Country Code Top Level Domain Research Articles

This Is a Local Domain: On Amassing Country-Code Top-Level Domains from Public Data

Domain lists are a key ingredient for representative censuses of the Web. Unfortunately, such censuses typically lack a view on domains under country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs). This introduces unwanted bias: many countries have a rich local Web that remains hidden if their ccTLDs are not considered. The reason ccTLDs are rarely considered is that gaining access - if possible at all - is often laborious. To tackle this, we ask: what can we learn about ccTLDs from public sources? We extract domain names under ccTLDs from 6 years of public data from Certificate Transparency logs and Common Crawl. We compare this against ground truth for 19 ccTLDs for which we have the full DNS zone. We find that public data covers 43%-80% of these ccTLDs, and that coverage grows over time. By also comparing port scan data we then show that these public sources reveal a significant part of the Web presence under a ccTLD. We conclude that in the absence of full access to ccTLDs, domain names learned from public sources can be a good proxy when performing Web censuses.

Self-regulation, internet domains and Indian Ocean territories

ABSTRACT In this article we survey the digital geography of seven Indian Ocean overseas territories. We examine the country code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD) of Australia (.cc – Cocos (Keeling) Islands,.cx – Christmas Island and.hm – Heard and McDonald Islands), Britain (.io – British Indian Ocean Territory) and France (.re – Réunion,.yt – Mayotte and.tf – French Southern and Antarctic Lands). We find there exists divides between the management of digital geography between differing colonial inheritances – broadly, that islands historically tied to the Anglophone states are managed by the private sector, and those that are Francophone are managed with far more central government oversight. This difference has implications for ccTLD use, disputes and who benefits from domain sale profits. We assert these administrative differences are due to France's active and conscious involvement in the internet administration of its territories, an important difference given the importance of self-regulation in current ccTLD management.

Readability and topics of the German Health Web: Exploratory study and text analysis.

The internet has become an increasingly important resource for health information, especially for lay people. However, the information found does not necessarily comply with the user's health literacy level. Therefore, it is vital to (1) identify prominent information providers, (2) quantify the readability of written health information, and (3) to analyze how different types of information sources are suited for people with differing health literacy levels. In previous work, we showed the use of a focused crawler to "capture" and describe a large sample of the "German Health Web", which we call the "Sampled German Health Web" (sGHW). It includes health-related web content of the three mostly German speaking countries Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, i.e. country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) ".de", ".at" and ".ch". Based on the crawled data, we now provide a fully automated readability and vocabulary analysis of a subsample of the sGHW, an analysis of the sGHW's graph structure covering its size, its content providers and a ratio of public to private stakeholders. In addition, we apply Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) to identify topics and themes within the sGHW. Important web sites were identified by applying PageRank on the sGHW's graph representation. LDA was used to discover topics within the top-ranked web sites. Next, a computer-based readability and vocabulary analysis was performed on each health-related web page. Flesch Reading Ease (FRE) and the 4th Vienna formula (WSTF) were used to assess the readability. Vocabulary was assessed by a specifically trained Support Vector Machine classifier. In total, n = 14,193,743 health-related web pages were collected during the study period of 370 days. The resulting host-aggregated web graph comprises 231,733 nodes connected via 429,530 edges (network diameter = 25; average path length = 6.804; average degree = 1.854; modularity = 0.723). Among 3000 top-ranked pages (1000 per ccTLD according to PageRank), 18.50%(555/3000) belong to web sites from governmental or public institutions, 18.03% (541/3000) from nonprofit organizations, 54.03% (1621/3000) from private organizations, 4.07% (122/3000) from news agencies, 3.87% (116/3000) from pharmaceutical companies, 0.90% (27/3000) from private bloggers, and 0.60% (18/3000) are from others. LDA identified 50 topics, which we grouped into 11 themes: "Research & Science", "Illness & Injury", "The State", "Healthcare structures", "Diet & Food", "Medical Specialities", "Economy", "Food production", "Health communication", "Family" and "Other". The most prevalent themes were "Research & Science" and "Illness & Injury" accounting for 21.04% and 17.92% of all topics across all ccTLDs and provider types, respectively. Our readability analysis reveals that the majority of the collected web sites is structurally difficult or very difficult to read: 84.63% (2539/3000) scored a WSTF ≥ 12, 89.70% (2691/3000) scored a FRE ≤ 49. Moreover, our vocabulary analysis shows that 44.00% (1320/3000) web sites use vocabulary that is well suited for a lay audience. We were able to identify major information hubs as well as topics and themes within the sGHW. Results indicate that the readability within the sGHW is low. As a consequence, patients may face barriers, even though the vocabulary used seems appropriate from a medical perspective. In future work, the authors intend to extend their analyses to identify trustworthy health information web sites.

Promoting Agritourism in Poland with Ready-Made Digital Components and Rustic Cyberfolklore

Online content can have unique cultural value. It is certainly the case for digital representations of folklore found on websites related to rural tourism, including agritourism. It is true for both archaic websites, copies of which are found in digital archives, and modern websites. The purpose of this paper is to assess the frequency of ready-made digital components and rustic folklore on agritourism farms’ websites. The exploration and comparative analysis involved 866 websites from two independent sets: (1) archaic websites, copies of which are available in the Internet Archive and (2) currently operational websites published in the Polish ccTLD (country code top-level domain). We employed HTML code exploration to verify the websites’ development technique and their selected characteristics, including content management systems (CMSs) and responsiveness. In the set of the ccTLD websites, we recorded such design attributes as the type of graphic layout, hero image, and parallax scrolling. The research demonstrated that ready-made folklore graphics were relatively rare among the investigated websites. Elements of rustic cyberfolklore were found only on 17 archaic websites (approx. 4%) and 52 ccTLD websites (approx. 12%). They were most often Kashubian patterns. The research suggests that rustic cyberfolklore is most often found on websites of agritourism farms in areas where local communities and ethnic groups are particularly active and strongly identify with regional traditions.

Forecasting internet diffusion in Italy based on the “.it” domain names metrics

Purpose The aim of this study is to examine the trend over time of the demand for .it domain names.This study first assesses whether there is a phase of growth and expansion or at a point of saturation. Second, this research can be useful also to compare researches that have considered other internet metrics and other models. Design/methodology/approach This paper describes the forecasting methods used to analyze the internet diffusion in Italy. The domain names under the country code top-level domain “.it” have used as metrics. To predict domain names .it the seasonal auto regressive integrated moving average (SARIMA) model and the Holt-Winters (H-W) methods have been used. Findings The results show that, to predict domain names .it the SARIMA model is better than the H-W methods. According to the findings, notwithstanding the forecast of a growth in domain names, the increase is however limited (about 3%), tending to reach a phase of saturation of the market of domain names .it. Originality/value In general many authors have studied internet diffusion applying statistical models that follow an S-shaped behavior. On the other hand, the more used diffusion models that follow an S-shape not always provide an adequate description of the Internet growth pattern. To achieve this goal, this paper demonstrates how the time series models, in particular SARIMA model and H-W models, fit well in explaining the spread of the internet.

The diffusion of National Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policies: A Network Approach

This paper investigates the adoption of national domain name dispute resolution policies (NDRPs) by country code Top Level Domains (ccTLD). We examine the textual similarity between different NDRPs (35 documents) using Exponential Random Graph Modeling (ERGM). First, we measure similarity between the texts (i.e., cosine similarity) and use it to construct a 35*35 adjacency matrix for a directed network early to late adopters. Using EGRM, we predict which nodal attributes and dyadic attributes predict the observed network. We conclude by discussing what the findings imply about the emergence of a global policy regime for the Internet.

Crawling the German Health Web: Exploratory Study and Graph Analysis.

BackgroundThe internet has become an increasingly important resource for health information. However, with a growing amount of web pages, it is nearly impossible for humans to manually keep track of evolving and continuously changing content in the health domain. To better understand the nature of all web-based health information as given in a specific language, it is important to identify (1) information hubs for the health domain, (2) content providers of high prestige, and (3) important topics and trends in the health-related web. In this context, an automatic web crawling approach can provide the necessary data for a computational and statistical analysis to answer (1) to (3).ObjectiveThis study demonstrates the suitability of a focused crawler for the acquisition of the German Health Web (GHW) which includes all health-related web content of the three mostly German speaking countries Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Based on the gathered data, we provide a preliminary analysis of the GHW’s graph structure covering its size, most important content providers and a ratio of public to private stakeholders. In addition, we provide our experiences in building and operating such a highly scalable crawler.MethodsA support vector machine classifier was trained on a large data set acquired from various German content providers to distinguish between health-related and non–health-related web pages. The classifier was evaluated using accuracy, recall and precision on an 80/20 training/test split (TD1) and against a crowd-validated data set (TD2). To implement the crawler, we extended the open-source framework StormCrawler. The actual crawl was conducted for 227 days. The crawler was evaluated by using harvest rate and its recall was estimated using a seed-target approach.ResultsIn total, n=22,405 seed URLs with country-code top level domains .de: 85.36% (19,126/22,405), .at: 6.83% (1530/22,405), .ch: 7.81% (1749/22,405), were collected from Curlie and a previous crawl. The text classifier achieved an accuracy on TD1 of 0.937 (TD2=0.966), a precision on TD1 of 0.934 (TD2=0.954) and a recall on TD1 of 0.944 (TD2=0.989). The crawl yields 13.5 million presumably relevant and 119.5 million nonrelevant web pages. The average harvest rate was 19.76%; recall was 0.821 (4105/5000 targets found). The resulting host-aggregated graph contains 215,372 nodes and 403,175 edges (network diameter=25; average path length=6.466; average degree=1.872; average in-degree=1.892; average out-degree=1.845; modularity=0.723). Among the 25 top-ranked pages for each country (according to PageRank), 40% (30/75) were web sites published by public institutions. 25% (19/75) were published by nonprofit organizations and 35% (26/75) by private organizations or individuals.ConclusionsThe results indicate, that the presented crawler is a suitable method for acquiring a large fraction of the GHW. As desired, the computed statistical data allows for determining major information hubs and important content providers on the GHW. In the future, the acquired data may be used to assess important topics and trends but also to build health-specific search engines.

The Managing Lawmaker in Cyberspace: A New Power Model

This paper is about the of The Internet Corporation for Names and Numbers (ICANN). It examines how this was created, augmented, strengthened, and reigned in. ICANN poses a puzzle. It is essentially an unregulated and undemocratic monopoly. Yet, ICANN's exercise of has been fairly contained. Since ICANN is a monopoly, what prevents it from taking a far more high-handed and extensive ruling posture? Even though at first blush my analogy is counterintuitive, I analogize ICANN to a managing lawmakers of market infrastructures, such as the New York Stock Exchange, while recognizing their differences. Unlike the Exchange, ICANN has close affinity to a political unit as well. The emergence of ICANN, its staying power, and the limitations on the exercise of its power, can be partly explained by an analogy to the economic theory of contestable markets. The theory deals with price. I equate price to power. High prices denote a high level of power. Low prices denote a lower level of power. In essence the theory suggests that under certain conditions a monopolist would charge low prices as if it operated in a competitive market. That is because higher prices will bring less efficient competitors into the market until prices fall and they will exit. This theory highlights a special balance of and its restraining effect. I believe that a similar idea helps understand ICANN's environment The paper notes that ICANN exercises power in default. All the strong constituents seem to have agreed not to claim exclusive control over the Internet infrastructure. The paper discusses the bases for ICANN's continuous power: its constitutional documents, and contracts, which have become part of its constitution, and its role as mediator among Internet large stakeholders. ICANN has augmented its by a stable and able management, and arguably maintained and strengthened its following by doing its share to support the stability of the Internet. ICANN's rising is demonstrated by the controversies concerning the country code Top Level Domain names (ccTLDs). The paper concludes that ICANN's is still being shaped. It could emerge along a market model, as a central catalyst for consensus building among parties with different interests. Alternatively, ICANN could also move towards a more regulatory model of consensus-based decision making. These decisions may then constitute precedents and mature into rules. Or ICANN can combine the two models to form a more structured market and more flexible regulatory body. The market model is likely to make experiment in the development of more than one root easier than the regulatory model. As the telephone experience has shown, the time may come for a multi-root cooperative Internet structure. Or we may face a technology that is today a mere twinkle in someone's eye.

The regulation of abusive activity and content: a study of registries’ terms of service

This paper studies the role of domain registries in relation to unlawful or unwanted use of a domain name or the underlying website content. It is an empirical and conceptual contribution to the online content regulation debate, with specific focus on European country code top-level (ccTLD) domain name registries. An analysis of the terms of service of 30 European ccTLD registries shows that one third of the registries contain some use-related provision, which corresponds to approximately 47% of registered domains. The analysis also turns towards examples of notice-and-takedown mechanisms, the emergence of proactive screening and the practice of data validation. Based on the analysis, it calls for more clarity and transparency regarding domain registries’ role in content- or use-related takedowns.

A country road: domain name disputes in .nz—is private dispute resolution working?

Abstract Domain name dispute literature focuses largely on generic top level domains and the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy. Country code top level domains (ccTLDs) attract far less commentary. This article addresses this gap with a detailed evaluation of one ccTLD dispute resolution system: .nz. Evaluation of domain name disputes presents unique challenges: there is no single system for resolving disputes, diverse legal tests apply across jurisdictions and categories of disputes vary. The article examines .nz in light of these challenges, developing and applying evaluation criteria to draw conclusions about the number and categories of disputes, resolution rates and overall effectiveness. The article analyses cases, including appeals, under the “unfair registration” test which contrasts with Nominet’s .uk dispute resolution policy on which the New Zealand system was closely modelled. The author concludes .nz operates a just and workable dispute resolution service that demonstrates effective and responsible ccTLD administration.

Domain Name Disputes and Their Resolution under UDRP Route: A Review

Domain names have a dual role in today’s internet driven market place – to map IP addresses and to act as identifier of trademark of a company. Unlike trademarks, domain names are not sufficiently protected by the laws of a country. There is no uniformity to protect domain names among the laws of various countries. In order to protect the domain names and bring uniformity, ICANN developed the Uniform Domain Name Resolution Policy (UDRP). In this research, the various kinds of domain name abuses are identified. The application of UDRP, domain name registration process and dispute resolution service process are examined. The major domain name dispute cases resolved under UPRP by WIPO are studied. It has been found that UDRP is applicable to generic top level domains (gTLDs) and new gTLDs. It is much less relevant for country code top level domains (ccTLDs). The losing party still has the option of appealing to a court of competent jurisdiction in case of gTLDs and new gTLDs. However, this option is seldom exercised. In order to protect the domain names in a better way, there is a need to bring uniformity to domain name laws of various countries. ICANN should formulate a model domain names dispute resolution law for adoption by various countries. Also, there is a need to strengthen the UDRP.

On domain registries and unlawful website content

The link of lawful domain names to unlawful content is a phenomenon that has not been very topical until recently. Traditionally, domain registries have been off the radar of content-related debates. Enforcement efforts, public discourse and academic research have focused on other intermediaries such as Internet access service providers, hosting platforms, and websites that link to content. This article shows, however, that the (secondary) liability of domain registries and registrars, and more specifically country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries for website content, has been tested in several EU Member States in recent years. The article investigates tendencies in the national lower-court jurisprudence and explores to what extent the liability exemption regime of the E-Commerce Directive applies to domain registries. The analysis concludes that whereas domain registries can be read under the exemptions in a teleological interpretation, more clarity is desirable.

On Domain Registries and Website Content – Shift in Intermediaries' Role in Light of Unlawful Content or Just Another Brick in the Wall?

The link of lawful domain names to unlawful content is a phenomenon that has not been very topical until recently. Traditionally, domain registries have been off the radar of content-related debates. Enforcement efforts, public discourse and academic research have focused on other intermediaries such as Internet access service providers, hosting platforms, and websites that link to content. This article shows that in recent years, however, that the (secondary) liability of domain registries and registrars, and more specifically country code top-level domain (ccTLD) registries for website content, has been tested in several EU Member States. The article investigates tendencies in the national lower-court jurisprudence and explores to what extent the liability exemption regime of the E-Commerce Directive applies to domain registries. The analysis concludes that whereas domain registries can be read under the exemptions in a teleological interpretation, more clarity is desirable.

A Jurisprudential Approach to Governments and Other Actors Attempts to Control the Internet Root Zone

In today’s world, no treaty regulates the Internet. Moreover, no international court has ruled over the Internet infrastructure. Despite this situation, governments (on behalf of their nation-states) and government bodies have tried to assert sovereignty over the Internet and stop or compromise the transmission of the Internet packets. Although the multi-stakeholder model of the Internet has been successful of keeping the Internet from a single point of control, many scholars and non-scholars have suggested the application of the rules of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) over the Internet. The purpose of these claims is solving controversies when multiple jurisdictions are involved (Barcomb, 2013; Kalpokienė & Kalpokas, 2012; Schmidt, 2017; Steven, 2001). However, as previous research suggests the application of the UNCLOS rules is also a call to apply the Westphalian model of sovereignty over the Internet (Vargas-Leon, 2017; Vargas Leon & Badiei, 2017). The application of the rules of UNCLOS into the Internet Root Zone is an example of governments’ traditional practice to exercise their jurisdiction beyond their territorial borders. This practice is characterized by the “coexistence” of spaces where nation-states keep for themselves different levels of sovereignty. Similarly to the rules of UNCLOS over the territorial sea and the high sea, when it comes to the application of sovereignty rules into the Internet realm, governments developed the following practices: (1) leave spaces where no sovereignty claims exist (at least theoretically), like the Root Zone itself, (2) exercise some level of sovereignty over some of the elements of the Root Zone, such as the country-code-top-level-domains (ccTLDs) and (3) leave spaces where their jurisdiction is exclusive, like in the delegation of the ccTLDs (Vargas Leon & Badiei, 2017). By using a multiple case study approach including the Iranian registry case and the .Amazon and .Africa controversies, this paper is an attempt to analyze, from a jurisprudential point of view, how the coexistence of different levels of jurisdiction exist within the Internet realm and how different actors, like individuals, court systems and government bodies get involved. As we should remember each one of the proposed case studies represents a scenario where the involved actors attempted to control some elements of the Internet Root Zone. The case Ben Haim vs. the Islamic Republic of Iran was an attempt of U.S. terrorist victims to seize control of the .ir Internet domain name, which is also Iran’s national country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) (Rabkin, 2014). The case .Amazon pits U.S. Amazon against the government of Brazil and Peru. Although the final decision belongs to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the Government Advisory Committee (GAC) (formed only by governments) backed Peru and Brazil claim (Segal, 2017). Finally the case .Africa controversy involves DotConnectAfrica (DCA) vs. ICANN; in this case, a Los Angeles court refused a preliminary injunction that prevents ICANN from adding .Africa to the Internet (McCarthy, 2017). This paper is an attempt to answer the following questions: What are the governments and governments’ organizations legal arguments to justify extending nation-states’ sovereignty into the Internet Root Zone? What are the non-governmental actors arguments use to try to control the Internet Root Zone? With this purpose in mind, our aim in this paper is to illustrate how the classic arguments governments used in the international domain affect the Internet Root Zone and the Internet infrastructure. Alongside with governments’ claims, we will attempt to look at the arguments non-governmental actors have used for the same purpose. Finally, we want to clarify that this paper does not advocate for any governance model for the root zone. Findings expect to explain the diverse legal opinions this matter has generated in the legal field and how they can influence the Internet governance debate.

Comparing the Archival Rate of Arabic, English, Danish, and Korean Language Web Pages

It has long been suspected that web archives and search engines favor Western and English language webpages. In this article, we quantitatively explore how well indexed and archived Arabic language webpages are as compared to those from other languages. We began by sampling 15,092 unique URIs from three different website directories: DMOZ (multilingual), Raddadi, and Star28 (the last two primarily Arabic language). Using language identification tools, we eliminated pages not in the Arabic language (e.g., English-language versions of Aljazeera pages) and culled the collection to 7,976 Arabic language webpages. We then used these 7,976 pages and crawled the live web and web archives to produce a collection of 300,646 Arabic language pages. We compared the analysis of Arabic language pages with that of English, Danish, and Korean language pages. First, for each language, we sampled unique URIs from DMOZ; then, using language identification tools, we kept only pages in the desired language. Finally, we crawled the archived and live web to collect a larger sample of pages in English, Danish, or Korean. In total for the four languages, we analyzed over 500,000 webpages. We discovered: (1) English has a higher archiving rate than Arabic, with 72.04% archived. However, Arabic has a higher archiving rate than Danish and Korean, with 53.36% of Arabic URIs archived, followed by Danish and Korean with 35.89% and 32.81% archived, respectively. (2) Most Arabic and English language pages are located in the United States; only 14.84% of the Arabic URIs had an Arabic country code top-level domain (e.g., sa) and only 10.53% had a GeoIP in an Arabic country. Most Danish-language pages were located in Denmark, and most Korean-language pages were located in South Korea. (3) The presence of a webpage in a directory positively impacts indexing and presence in the DMOZ directory, specifically, positively impacts archiving in all four languages. In this work, we show that web archives and search engines favor English pages. However, it is not universally true for all Western-language webpages because, in this work, we show that Arabic webpages have a higher archival rate than Danish language webpages.

Open data in Nepal: a webometric network analysis

This study examines the current open data trends in Nepal based on the webometric analysis method by using search engines to trawl through websites and obtain data. The results indicate that various national and international nonprofit organizations, public sector organizations, educational institutions , and a few commercial organizations were the initial actors fostering open data in Nepal. Therefore, these organizations were analyzed in terms of their networking patterns and the extent to which they are exposed internationally in cyberspace by using Webometric Analyst 2.0. Inter-linkage analysis, co-mention analysis, and link impact analyses were conducted to explore the networking behavior in the World Wide Web. The results revealed that international organizations (IOs) were strongly interlinked. Nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), government organizations (GOs), and IOs were interlinked, but weakly. In terms of the co-mention network analysis, IOs with IOs were more significant than NGOs with NGOs, GOs, or business organizations because IOs had been working actively for many years, their web presence was high, and they worked in other fields, including open data. A link impact analysis was also conducted using its indicators of seed sites linked to external websites in terms of the estimated number of top-level domains and country-code top-level domains.

A Marketplace of Networks: Power and Counter-Power in the Domain Name System

This paper draws on early findings from a multiple-case study analysis to consider the ways in which country code top-level domain names (ccTLDs) are embedded with specific political, economic and cultural values and the extent to which these techno-social objects go on to mediate geopolitical and economic conflicts, including political censorship, intellectual property rights enforcement and cybercrime. It suggests that a focus on power and the sociopolitical and cultural relations that both shape and are shaped by these technological objects is crucial to understanding the role of ccTLDs in the networked public sphere. To this end, the following overarching research questions inform the overall direction of this project: (1) to what extent, if any, do ccTLDs mediate geopolitical, social, and economic conflict, and in what ways? And (2) to what extent, if any, are ccTLDs mediated by geopolitical, social, and economic conflicts, and in what ways? To answer these questions the project draws on a multiple-case study design focusing on three cases, which I suggest are emblematic of the extent to which ccTLDs serve as boundary objects, mediating power and counter-power in the networked information economy. Before delving into the cases, the project begins with a historical analysis of the origins of ccTLDs and their role in early debates over Internet governance. Drawing on publicly available texts and archival materials from relevant stakeholders, this analysis seeks to provide much-needed historical context to contemporary debates over ccTLD policy and Internet governance more broadly. This is followed by early findings from a case study of Switzerland’s “ch” ccTLD and its role as the “domain of last resort” for Wikileaks. Filling a gap in the literature on the role of ccTLDs in global Internet governance debates past and present, this study suggests that notions of territorial sovereignty and local authority, often associated with ccTLDs, belie a much more complicated reality in which geographically agnostic relations are constructed along political, economic and cultural lines. To this end, the paper concludes by situating ccTLDs in the larger context of Internet governance and the politics of Internet architecture.

Internet Domain Names in China

This article aims at documenting the implementation of the Domain Name System in China, in coordination and in tension with the global Domain Name System since the end of the 1980s with the Chinese country-code top-level domain “.cn,” and more recently with the creation of Chinese-language domain names such as “.中国” and “.中文网.” It puts into perspective the notion of “digital sovereignty” by analysing the role of the DNS in the “localisation” of online content as part of the censorship system. It further shows that although Chinese representatives have always been very critical of the existing architecture and management of the DNS on the global stage, their attitude has evolved from de facto, bottom-up participation and protection of their interests to a more confident and assertive behaviour, as the growth of the Chinese Internet has put them in a more dominant position.

The Neverending ccTLD Story

Country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) are the two-letter suffixes used by countries to denote their Internet addresses. Examples include .fr (for France), .tv (for Tuvalu) and .uk (for the United Kingdom). When ccTLDs were first developed, ccTLD policymaking was not high on the international lawmaking agenda. However, as the Internet explodes and as countries begin to realize the potential of this key information infrastructure, ccTLDs have received significant attention from the international community. Added to the ccTLD policymaking debate is the creation and development of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a non-profit corporation formed to assume responsibility for the IP address space allocation, protocol parameter assignment, domain name system management, and root server system management functions previously performed under U.S. Government contract by IANA and other entities. This book chapter recounts the power struggle over the control of the Domain Name System and authority to delegate and administer ccTLDs. It traces how ccTLD policymaking has been transformed from ad hoc, informal coordination to international, contract-based governance. It also discusses the various major players in the ccTLD debate: ICANN, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), ccTLD managers, national governments, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO).

Banal nationalism and queers online: Enforcing and resisting cultural meanings of .tr

Focusing on daily (re)productions of national identities online, in this article, I investigate a particular country-code Top-Level Domain, .tr for Turkey. I follow Billig’s concept of ‘banal nationalism’ to argue that .tr (re)produces online Turkish national imaginations. Furthermore, I inspect the hegemonic Turkish norms of sexuality to examine what kind of Turkishness .tr (re)produces. The analyses of the policies governing the allocation process of .tr and the email interviews with the authors of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans* websites in Turkey show that .tr works to (re)produce, in a banal way, queer-free notion of Turkishness online. My analysis also demonstrates that some authors of the analysed websites do not dismiss .tr as banal but refuse to use it in resistance against the Turkish national requirements embedded in the domain. More broadly, I argue for the acknowledgement of cultural structures in internet governance studies.