Daniel Turp, a long-time sovereignist and member of the Parti Québecois, is currently lobbying and asking the ICANN to create a .qc extension. His vision is to create a “true” Québec web, in the same way that the province has already its own flag, parliament, and all kinds of symbols to represent its nation/culture.
While the ICANN hasn’t formally said no to the request, it has replied that Québec must be either a country member of the United Nations or a territory managed temporarily by the International Court of Justice, which isn’t the case for Québec.
Daniel Turp, who didn’t seem discouraged, said that territories like Catalonia have now their own extensions (.cat for the Spanish province) and it would then be logical to get a .qc extension. He plans next to mobilize web users from Québec and get support for his idea, in the form of a petition.
I am sure there are lots of local businesses who would love getting a .qc domain name (think hotels, restaurants, or other small businesses where geolocalized websites matter), in the same way that it makes sense sometimes to get a .ca domain instead of trying to get a .com. The proposal sounds then as a good idea, although the arguments used by the MP are a bit far-fetched and dishonest for me. It doesn’t look like there are millions of active, innovative and unique websites in Québec up to the point that we would need to get a dedicated .qc domain to accomodate for that. I think Daniel Turp should first focus as a MP on getting a great Québec web, and make sure entrepreneurs, innovative companies and organizations get the conditions to do that, and then we will worry about symbols and those two letters afterwards.
Comments
Eric April 18, 2008
Simply put, the .qc.ca extension is clumsy and people don’t register that, a .qc would be much better for local businesses and individuals.
Also, the .ca just passed the 1 million domain mark, many countries TLD have less than 10000 registered domains, so the TLD would be justified even there is not “millions of active, innovative and unique websites in Québec”.
I hope we get that extension soon as I’d be glad to get one and offer it to my customers.
Patrick April 18, 2008
Going by your logic for size, probably 5-6 US states and 1 or 2 provinces should get TLDs before Québec.
What’s next, TLDs for NYC, Tokyo, London? The size argument doesn’t hold up and other reasons are all related to independance in some way.
I think Heri gets it right 100% with :
“I think Daniel Turp should first focus as a MP on getting a great Québec web, and make sure entrepreneurs, innovative companies and organizations get the conditions to do that, and then we will worry about symbols and those two letters afterwards.”
Christopher Murtagh April 19, 2008
If Greenland (a territory of Denmark) can have .gl, and Catalonia can have .cat, why can’t Quebec have .qc? It seems to me that the folks who would deny this are the ones that are politicizing it.
Heri April 20, 2008
I totally understand the point, hence the photo illustrating the post. I know Québec has its own culture compard to other provinces.
My point is that Québec has still some catch-up to do, content-wise, in order to gain the right to have .qc tld extension. I’d rather wish people spent their time on building world-renowned web destination and innovating for the web than spending their time lobbying for this extension.
I’ve written a couple of articles like this a while ago on my blog, and thought Québec is in many ways similar to South Korea, a unique country that could drown in the whole Asia continent, which didn’t happen as they developped unique, innovative services (citizen journalism, p2p answers instead of web search among others).
Handytarife January 24, 2011