.no

.no is the ccTLD for Norway. It is managed by Norid A/S.

History

Norway was the first country, following the United States, to join ARPANET in 1973. In 1983, the .no TLD was delegated for research by Jon Postel. Responsibility for the ccTLD was assigned to the neutral agency UNNINET in 1987, after the project's creation the year before. By 1989, there were 19 registered domains, stored in the oldest zone file. In 1993, UNNINET AS is established as its own corporation. By the end of 1995, 1000 domains were registered under .no.

The .no project started being referred to as Norid in 1996, which stands for Norwegian service for registration of Internet domain names. In 1998, the advisory body Norpol was formed, and in 1999, Norid operations were transferred from UNINETT to the newly-formed subsidiary, UNINETT FAS AS. Later in 1999, the registrar system was introduced. As of March 2001, 100,000 domain names were registered, after a spike caused by the liberalization of domain name rules. In 2003, UNINETT Norid AS was established as a subsidiary under UNINETT. In 2004, domain name rules were liberalized yet again, and by March of that year, 200,000 domains were registered.

Rules and Restrictions

Norwegian organizations and private individuals over the age of 18, can hold a Norwegian domain name. Organizations must have an organization number and be registered in the Central Coordinating Register for Legal Entities. Private individuals must be registered in the National Population Register with a national identity number. All domain name holders must have a Norwegian mailing address. Embassies are considered independent organizations who may register domain names under .no.

An organization can register up to 100 domain names per organization number in the format "mydomain.no". In addition, domain names can be registered under relevant categories and under geographical areas associated with the organization. A private individual can register up to five domain names in the format "mydomain.no". In addition, a private individual can register domains under "priv.no" and geographical areas with which the individual has some association.

Second-level Domains

There are two different categories for the second-level domains under .no. The Category SLDs require the applicant to represent an institution of the relevant type, for example, "museum.no" are for museums in Norway. The whole list of the Category SLDs and their requirements can be checked here. The geographical SLDs are referent to counties, cities, towns, villages and municipalities in Norway. The geographical era must be associated with the organization or individual. The whole list of the Geographical SLDs and their requirements can be checked here.

Characters

The domain name must consist of no less than 2 and no more than 63 characters. The name can include:

• letters from a to z;
• numbers from 0 to 9;
• hyphen, but the domain name cannot start or end with a hyphen;
• the Norwegian special characters á, à, ä, č, ç, đ, é, è, ê, ï, ŋ, ń, ñ, ó, ò, ô, ö, š, ŧ, ü, ž, æ, ø and å.

.co.no. Controversy

Norid announced in October 2010 that it and CoDNS would begin offering third-level .co.no names to the public, in order to bring some flexibility to the .no ccTLD. CoDNS was slated to be outsourced by Norid as the registry offering registrations under the .co.no domain name.

Prior to 2001, the domain name co.no, and other similar two-letter possibilities , were on a list of .no names forbidden from user registration. In 2001, the restriction was lifted, and a company called Elineweb A.S. registered co.no. Nine years later, the name was placed back on a list of forbidden names, and registrants were allowed to maintain usage of those names, though they were barred from transferring them to other registrants.

Norid realized in 2009 that the Whois record for co.no lists Elineweb as the owner of the domain name, though rights had already been outsourced to CoDNS for selling registrations under that third-level domain name. CoDNS had already offered a similar service in the Netherlands, under the third-level domain name co.nl. According to the Operational Manager of CoDNS, Sander Scholten, CoDNS sued Norid in 2011 after an inability to solve the ownership dispute in an "amicable way".

Elineweb also sued Norid in October 2011. In July 2012, Norwegian courts ruled that Norid cannot revoke Elineweb's registration or transfer it to a third party. As a result, Elineweb plans to offer .co.no domain names, in partnership with CoDNS, on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Country code top-level domain

Top-Level Domain