Category — Ethnic

The Arab League hopes to operate a major Arabic online hub after structural changes to the internet, including the introduction of Arabic-language web addresses, are implemented in the coming year.

The league plans to compete with domains such as “.com” and “.net” with its own “.arab” domain, registered in Arabic and Latin characters. The system that manages web addresses is undergoing its most significant change in decades, allowing the use of international scripts such as Arabic, Chinese and Hindi, and liberalising the registration process for top-level domains, such as “.org”.

Consumer Benefits: 175 Million Arabic Speakers
Supporters: The Arab League

.BZH is a TLD for the 4 million ethnic “Bretons” of the Brittany region in France. According to the website: “Catalonia has just opened its extension. Cat to promote its language and culture! Soon Scotland, Galicia, the Basque Country and Wales will have their own extension. Users, communities, companies, associations are also likely to want an extension. Bzh “for their Internet communications. This approach calls for a mobilization.”

Consumer Benefits: 4 MM ethnic Bretons
Supporters: Grass Roots Breton Activists

dotCYM Cyf. is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee which will be applying for and then managing an internet top-level domain for the Welsh linguistic and cultural community.

dotCYM has been campaigning for a top level Internet domain name for the Welsh cultural and linguistic community since 2005. If Wales is successful in bidding for its own domain name, we will have access to:

• Good domain names for Welsh businesses (short, descriptive, and memorable) which will be much cheaper than the thousands of pounds that good .com names now cost.
• A home for Welsh culture of every type to demonstrate the richness of our Welsh heritage and the opportunities we have for a better quality of life.
• A domain name structure which supports the Welsh language and addresses bilingualism and gives a renewed focus for Welsh literature and Welsh speaking communities.
• A significant boost to marketing Welsh businesses with our own portals – hotels.cym and visit.cym will boost tourism and cut advertising costs (at the moment, a search for ‘welsh hotel’ on Google returns 3,460,000 results, but we have less than 5000 hotels and B&Bs – a wide range of non-local resellers are responsible for the extra results, and the extra costs they create are passed on to visitors, making us less competitive)
• Better search results – Google and Yahoo have confirmed that local domains like .cym will score higher in searches including related terms like Wales or Cymru.

Our own domain will also result in more Welsh internet spending remaining in Wales – at the moment, Welsh internet users spend most of their money outside Wales, which is a damaging drain our economy cannot afford. Highlighting Welsh businesses will make it easier for people to choose Welsh companies. What’s more, a .cym extension will make it easier to police eCrime in Wales, as well as eCrime which targets Welsh internet users, making Wales a safer place to be online.

http://www.dotcym.org

Consumer Benefits: Residents of Wales and speakers of Welsh
Supporters: Cardiff City Council (capital of Wales); Deputy Leader Cllr Neil McEvoy; Tom Brooks, Westminster All Parliamentary IT Committee; Peter Black AM; Bethan Jenkins AM; Jill Evans MEP; Welsh Language Board

Puntogal

.GAL is for the Galican Culture, similar to the premise that Punt Cat operates the .CAT TLD under for Catalan.

More information: PuntoGAL

Consumer Benefits: People of Galician Descent – 4 Million Worldwide
Supporters: Academia Galega, Asociación de Enxeñeiros de Telecomunicacións de Galicia,Asociación de Editores de Galicia, Empresas Galegas Adicadas a Internet (Eganet), Consello da Xuventude de Galicia, Colexio Profesional de Xornalistas de Galicia (CPXG), Hoxe, ISOC-Galicia, Asociación Fillos de Galicia (fillos.org), A Mesa pola Normalización Lingüística, Vieros, Consello da Cultura Galega

Indigenous Peoples have a long history of collaboration and connection with each other. We believe the global indigenous  community should be identified and enhanced by having its own sponsored gTLD on the Internet. Under a .indigi sponsored TLD those nations, tribes, peoples and organisations can assert control over their own Internet space thus reducing the current threats of cyber squatting, intellectual property rights violations and authentication of content.

A .indigi gTLD will play a strategic role in validating indigenous cultures and languages in an age of increasing globalisation. It will make it easier for individuals and groups who wish to associate with the community to identify with other users around the world. The success of the dotIndigi campaign will confirm that the World Wide Web really is inclusive of Indigenous Peoples. http://www.dotindigi.com/

Consumer benefits: 68MM Indiginous People
Supporters: The New Zealand Māori Internet Society (NZMIS) with support from indigenous organisations

A campaign by a group of Scots who believe that the Scots Community of Interest online, Scottish Culture and Scotland’s Languages should have the opportunity to be identified and enhanced by having its own sponsored community top-level domain (scTLD) on the Internet.  Under a dotSCO sponsored TLD, those organisations, companies and individuals, throughout the world, that express themselves through Scotland’s languages online, or wish to support or identify with the Scottish Culture or the Scots online community around the world will be able to register a clearly identifiable domain name.  DotSco has gathered support from across the globe from individual Scots, Scots societies and from speakers of Scots and Gaelic for the dotSCO campaign. They believe that they can raise the profile of Scots culture and communities around the world.  The dotSCO campaign feels that the World Wide Web should be multi-national and a multilingual medium and that their culture should be represented. And that this opportunity (a new tld) will also play an important role in promoting further the use of the Scots and Gaelic languages on the World Wide Web as a modern medium of communication.

Consumer Benefits: People of Scottish descent (10 million)
Supporters: Scottish Government, First Minister of Scotland, Alex Salmond MSP

On the initiative of the Szekler National Council it was managed the visualization of Szeklerland in the virtual space. The ICANN, the highest organization responsible for the supervision and allocation of the domain names, in its communication of 13th of May accepted the .SIC highest level domain name as abbreviation of SICULITAS. So, from the first quarter of 2010 this could be the own internet domain name of Szeklerland. The translation of “Siculitas” today means “Szekler people”, but in the Hungarian administration of the Middle Ages the meaning was ” a community with self-government and freedom rights”. With the choice of this domain name the Szekler National Council would like to express not only a regional identity but also the historical roots of the Szekler freedom.

The own internet domain name of Szeklerland makes it possible that from the first quarter of 2010 self-governments, institutions, companies, private individuals in Szeklerland use for their internet addresses the .sic termination. The Szekler National Council considers as an important step of the autonomy aspirations, a victory the fact that Szeklerland appears as an independent entity on the net among countries, autonomous regions and cultural communities. Beyond that the new domain name could be a symbol of unity for the Szeklers all around the world because they will have the opportunity to use for their internet addresses the .sic termination. The ICANN accepted the highest domain name .sic for Szeklerland together with other nine regions%u2019 domain names. So, Szeklerland appeared in the news together with Quebec, Scotland, Bretagne, Cornwall, England, Wales, Leon, Basque country and Galicia. The Szekler National Council could decide in his next session to propose the SIC abbreviation for the international marking of Szeklerland. www.dotsic.com/

Consumer Benefits:  institutions, companies, private individuals in Szeklerland
Supporters: Szekler National Council

The chief of the Zulu tribe, His Majesty King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, recently sent a letter notifying ICANN of his intent to register the .zulu domain name so that different but related businesses and other groups can be linked by their domain name to the entire Zulu community. According to His Majesty, “We believe that the .Zulu TLD, as conceived and proposed by the Dot Zulu Project Inc. represents the best interests of the Zulu community and will be able to provide a viable structure for us as an evolving community.”

Consumer Benefits: 10 million Zulu tribe members
Supporters: King Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu, king of the Zulu Nation