.um
| ccTLD | |
|---|---|
| Type | ccTLD |
| Region | NA |
| Country |
|
| Implemented | September, 1997 |
.um was the ccTLD for the United States Minor Outlying Islands.[1]
History[edit | edit source]
In December 1997 .um was delegated to USC/ISI with the United States Domain Registrar (USDR) as the designated Administrative and Technical contact. USDR was operated by USC/ISI.
In November 2000, the name of the sponsoring organization was changed to United States Minor Outlying Islands Registry, with the Admin and Tech contact changed to reflect the same name.
Throughout 2006, the .um zone was a lame delegation. IANA received a number of enquiries regarding this, and IANA approached ISI to determine the status of the registry. USC/ISI responded in October 2006, declaring that they are no longer interested in managing the .UM domain, and asking for the delegation to be removed.
In 2007, IANA reported that "there appear to have been no registrations in .um historically, and there are no current delegations in the zone. The currently designated name servers appear to be have been repaired in December 2006, so they are no longer lame."
Under these circumstances, IANA recommended that the .um delegation be removed and that .um be returned to the pool of unallocated ccTLDs.
On January 16, 2007 the Board of ICANN passed the following resolution:
"Whereas, the .UM top-level domain was originally delegated in December 1997.
Whereas, the currently assigned operator is the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute.
Whereas, the .UM domain is not in active use, and the current operator no longer wishes to operate it.
Whereas, ICANN has reviewed the request, and has determined that the returning the domain to unassigned status is the appropriate action to reflect its status.
Recognizing, this would not prohibit future delegation of the domain to another party that meets the regular ccTLD delegation criteria.
Resolved (07.04), that the delegation of .um be removed from the DNS root, and that it be returned to unassigned status."
On March 12, 2008, IANA received a letter from the United States Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, noting that the .um domain is associated with a group of islands under the jurisdiction of the United States, and thus, any decision regarding the domain must have the approval of the U.S. Government. The letter expressed that the U.S. Government had no objection to USC/ISI's request to no longer operate the .UM domain. In addition, the letter supported the ICANN Board's recommendation that the .um domain be placed in an unassigned status. The letter also noted that ICANN should take no action with respect to future delegation of the .um domain without consultation with and prior approval of the U.S. Government.[1]
.um's status became "unassigned" as of April, 2008.[2]
References[edit | edit source]
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