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Quebec politician may seek domain name in vain

Quebec politician may seek domain name in vain By:  Briony Smith On: 17 Apr 2008 For: ComputerWorld Canada Creator

The Parti Quebecois's Daniel Turp starts a petition to get the province its own ".qc" for all French-Canadian Web sites, but CIRA says he may have overlooked an important rule in granting such addresses


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A Parti Quebecois member of Quebec's National Assembly announced this week his petition for a Quebec-specific “.qc” domain, despite the fact, according to the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, that, under current laws, it would require that Quebec be deemed a country in its own right first.

“You can’t just walk up and request one,” David Hicks, director of marketing and communications with the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, said. “It’s a fairly involved process.”

It is the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) that doles these out, and they are governed by a large set of strict rules from the ISO. One of these is the ISO 31-66-1, which lays out the two-letter country codes as dictated by who the United Nations deems an official country.

“There’s no .qc on there. And to get a two-letter code, you have to go to the standards body to get reclassified as a country,” said Hicks. Daniel Turp’s petition includes the statement that “Quebec and Quebec citizens should be able to endow themselves with their own identity and a visible presence on the map.”

Petitioners would be, according to the petition, “in favor of the creation of a provincial extension, .qc, that would be unique to Quebec and that would be applicable to domain names of the first level.”

It also argues that a precedent has been set by the autonomous Spanish region Catalonia, which has its own .cat domain. It was “established to serve the needs of the linguistic community and Catalan culture,” according to the petition.

Currently, he said, the government intranet uses this designation already. Also, the petition points out, Quebec has higher Internet usage rates (at 71.5 per cent) than France (54.7 per cent), the United Kingdom (62.3 per cent), Canada as a whole (66 per cent) and the Swiss (67.8 per cent), according to a Centre francophone d'informatisation des organizations study.


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Tags: francophone, codes, government
Briony Smith Briony Smith is a contributor to the International Data Group (IDG) News Service, which publishes global technology stories from bureaus around the world to more than 300 publications in more than 60 countries.

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Comments (27)

More moronic stuff
4/28/2008 12:00:00 AMFirst to Chris thorpe: Last I heard, the province has over 7.2 million people, a bit behind Ontario's 12.3+ million. The higher usage is a useless fact. So Quebecois are Internet savvy. Doesn't mean they are all accessing Quebec sites exclusively. I wonder how savvy Mr. Turp is. Seems like he didn't bother reading the fine print. Of course he'll then say the rest of Canada added the country only rule on purpose. BTW, the site for the petition doesn't work. I wonder if it's in English and French. If not, it would show what Turp thinks of the 1+ million anglos and allophones in the province.
RE: More moronic stuff
4/28/2008 12:00:00 AMThe URL for his petition should be http://www.operationpoint-qc.org/ and yes it is in French only.
Bait Taken
4/28/2008 12:00:00 AMHow much more must we suffer the small minded on both sides of this BS. If I could have I would have voted yes in the last referendum. Imagine a country where our federal government had but one language and wasn't focused on one province to get re-elected with a majority. Good luck, good-bye and hope you get your qc. All you Quebec anglophones, plenty of room and respect in Canada for all of you. We don't need language police or the other trappings of a xenophobic society.
GeoTLDs
4/21/2008 12:00:00 AMwow, a lot of comments here are hostile, silly and uniformed. It is not an immutable law of physics that TLD's be exclusively for the use of 'countries' ... (in the real world the definition of a 'country' is fairly loose anyway and countries vary widely in their political power and cultural presence - in practical terms Quebec certainly has more sovereignty than Andorra). Anyway there's lots of ongoing work at ICANN on geographic TLDs especially for cities and urban regions (the .berlin group for example). Surely people are aware that Laos (.la) and Togo (.to) are umm 'sharing' their 'country codes' with cities that are much more populous and visible on the world stage than those two sovereign countries.
Not quite a country
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMActually, you don't quite have to be a country to get a 2-letter country code or top-level domain. But the hurdles are high, as there are three steps involved: 1) You have to convince the U.N. Statistics Division that you are sufficiently separate, economically and/or legally, from the rest of the country that a new 3-digit (not 2-letter) code is justified. For example, Greenland is part of Denmark legally, but it is considered separate enough (it is not part of the E.U., for example) to get its own 3-digit code: the main part of Denmark is code 208, whereas Greenland is code 304. 2) You have to get the ISO 3166 Maintenance Agency to agree to assign a 2-letter code corresponding to the 3-digit U.N. code. If they accept your proposal, they will also assign a 3-letter code, which is not used on the Internet. In general, the Maintenance Agency will not act without backing from the host country's standards body -- in Canada's case, the Standards Council of Canada. This happened recently when the British Crown dependencies of Guernsey and Jersey were assigned official codes GG and JE corresponding to their existing U.N. code numbers; the 2-letter codes had long been in unofficial use. 3) You then have to convince ICANN to create an entry in the DNS root for your country, which requires having appropriate infrastructure, one or more registrars on board, and so on. As Quebec is obviously tightly integrated economically with the rest of Canada (and North America, for that matter), carrying the day with the UN would require a convincing argument that Quebec was not merely another province of Canada but had a special legal status vis-a-vis the rest of the country, as (say) St. Pierre & Miquelon has vis-a-vis France.
Why not?
4/30/2008 12:00:00 AMIn french, we say ''what is good for pitou is good for minou''. As an 100 years old league, NHL hockey rules are more than strict. Board of directors got to agree at very large scale to fulfill one's requirement. If Calgary Flames can put Alberta's (and Canadian) flag on theirs shoulders, wasn't there any political statement here?? Juste imagine a second that Montreal's Canadiens would request to have Quebec's flag worn on their jersey. Wouldn't Don Cherry choke to death over this? (Personnaly, I would hope so...) If Catalan, in order to promote their cultural distinction, got .cat domain, for the same reasons should Turp'S project to have a .qc be granted. Who own's internet? Isn't internet a free and democratic land?? Should't internet be the land where small brother can stand against big brother? Those Quebecois haters here are standing behind supposed internet's rules to hide teir own racism. Shame on them.
Specious Argument
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMGee, Quebec has 71.5% of their population on the internet? Let's look at actual numbers rather than percentages. Quebec has 5.4 million people with the internet compared to 33.3 million for France. So somehow that justifies the '.qc'? Get real.
Bad Precendent
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMHopefully the ISO standards are enough to keep ICANN from folding and they can't be overidden by Quebec's notwithstanding clause. Otherwise it could set a bad precedent to allow states and provinces all over the world to request thier own top-level domain.
Poor Idea
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMThe ICANN rules are in place for good reason. Allowing Quebec to have this designation would open the flood gates to every Province, State, County and even municipalities demanding their own root domains. Intuitively finding an internet address by typing in a name and a dot com/net/ca/gov/etc. extension is hard enough already. Adding even more LESS intuitive root domains will only make that more difficult. Additionally, as a Western Canadian, I see this request as a lightly veiled attempt to try to further separate from the mainstream Canadian way of life, in this case via the internet. Just my own thoughts.
Precedent???
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AM.cat is not a 2-lettter code, so I fail to see how Catalonia functions as a precedent.
RE: Quebec politician may seek domain name in vain
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMThis is just another example of the ongoing French-Canadian arrogance on the part of the Parti Quebecois. They push our Feds around to get what they want and now they're attempted it with CIRA. Get over it, you lost the referendum vote!! You are still part of Canada, and should be damn privledged to use the .ca TLD.
Quebec politician may seek domain name in vain
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMIt is at times like this that I miss Chretien. We need a say it as it is leader not some weak knee-ed pushover.
Emigrate
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMNot all Quebecers/Quebeqois are fools. If all these speratists are so enamoured of exclusive French life let them move to France. In my opinion they are nothing but traitors and seditionists. Vive Canada!
.qc.ca isn't good enough?!?
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMSo what would become of .qc.ca, keep that too? Turff it? You'd think they could acknowledge that they are part of a country. While we're at it lets all get top level domain names, I call .YO, my chair is the capital of the country of YO, and we hold all coprights related to YO MAMA, YOYO and YO FROG GITALIFE.
Why not?
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMWhy shouldn't Quebec? Why not BC, New York City, Bavaria or anyone else? What difference does it make? Vive la difference!
Let's all get one!
4/19/2008 12:00:00 AMI have an acre and a quarter of land just outside of Victoria. We have 100% internet usage (humans) on the property. Granted, our cat refuses to use the internet and what is worse, refuses to become bilingual. For this I have cancelled issued her an email address. Can I get my own .jm domain?
Mr Turp is overpaid
4/28/2008 12:00:00 AMMan... and this guy is getting paid by my taxes?? I'm from Quebec, and yes I am a separatist, but I've also been a webmester for over 8 years... And so I say this Turp guy is a total idiot wasting good money on ideas he could have in education, health, etc... He doesn't seem to understand that domain names aren't political expressions of a culture... they are a very strict and standardized organization, period. 2 letter domains are for COUNTRIES... and a 2 letter sub-domain name is for states, provinces, etc... That's it. I don't care if you are red, blue, indian, english, french, french-canadian, frog, pepsi, square-head... The organisation of domain names don't care. That's how it is.
Get a life....
4/26/2008 12:00:00 AMIf Mr Turp is really so adamant that Quebec should be a country, I think we should accede to his wishes partway.... send him back to his 'ancestral' home and give Quebec to its aboriginal people. Problem solved!
RE: Specious Argument
4/26/2008 12:00:00 AMIf Mr Turp is really so adamant that Quebec should be a country, I think we should accede to his wishes partway.... send him back to his 'ancestral' home and give Quebec to its aboriginal people. Problem solved!
Its a small thing to ask
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMWith Harper et als recognition that we in Quebec represent a distince society (albeit within Canada) why shouldn't we have this? We would not object if BC, Alberta or even Kelowna went for it. And before I get flamed I'm an anglo Quebecer and proud of it. Et Vive le Canada
Former Anglo-Montrealer
4/18/2008 12:00:00 AMI doubt very much he 'overlooked' the rule. In fact, I'm sure as a separatist, he is very much aware of the symbolic value of having a country TLD.
It would be very useful ...
7/25/2008 12:00:00 AMreading all the hateful anti Quebec comments in here, one can only understand the need for a separate TLD. Also, Greenland (a territory of Denmark) got their .gl TLD, and, according to a new proposal by ICANN, any entity, including cities or corporations will soon be able to aquire their own TLD : http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-4-26jun08-en.htm In this context, I fail to see how it could be denied for Quebec.
It would be very useful ...
7/25/2008 12:00:00 AMreading all the hateful anti Quebec comments in here, one can only understand the need for a separate TLD. Also, Greenland (a territory of Denmark) got their .gl TLD, and, according to a new proposal by ICANN, any entity, including cities or corporations will soon be able to aquire their own TLD : http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-4-26jun08-en.htm In this context, I fail to see how it could be denied for Quebec.
Speechless
4/29/2008 12:00:00 AMI'm left speechless by this, I don't know if I should scream or laugh!
Just another thin edge of the wedge!
4/28/2008 12:00:00 AMThis is never going to go away. There will always be a splinter group in Quebec, blaming the Maudit Anglais for their lot in life and their supposed lack of opportunity. Most of this attitude is inherited and deep rooted in their background. The chip on their shoulder just isn't going to go away because there are too many political and social agitators. They are hoping to eventually grind the rest of Canada down, gaining a small concession here, a little bit there until eventually they have what they want. That is, if they can even explain what they want - and WHY.
More insanity
4/28/2008 12:00:00 AMMore whining from the whiner component of the province. Instead of focusing on unique positive aspects in a beneficial way (say advertising as such for tourism), this kind of garbage makes it to the media instead, which pretty much says to the rest of the world that the place is populated by whining brats.
So tired of this crap...
5/1/2008 12:00:00 AMI'm a French Canadian, I once was a separatist, but was also too young to vote or to understand).Le Partis Quebecois (PQ) is once again showing how completely disconnected they are from reality. When most countries are working hard to get recognize in the Global economy, the PQ is again trying to isolate Quebec from the rest of the World.By building their ideology and stategy on past history, PQ is again showing their absence of vision. Stop living in the past! We said NO twice (referendums). Get over it!!, Get a life and open up to the World. Please!
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