.ca
| Status: | Active |
| country: | Canada |
| Introduced: | 1987 |
| Registry Provider: | Canadian Internet Registration Authority |
| Type: | Geo |
More information: 
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.ca is the country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Canada. It is managed by Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) / Autorité Canadienne pour les enregistrements Internet (ACEI) [1]
History[edit | edit source]
Registrants of .ca domains must meet Canadian Presence Requirements as defined by the registry.[2]
IANA operator Jon Postel allocated the ccTLD originally to John Demco of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in 1988.[3] At the time, the internet was used mostly for research.[3] The administration of the .ca domain was carried out by John Demco with the assistance of a .ca committee of volunteers. The names from the .ca domain were assigned without charge to the applicants. The first .ca domain name was upei.ca, registered in 1988 by the University of Prince Edward Island.[4]
Over the next decade, the .ca ccTLD was operated by Demco and a committee of volunteers across Canada. In 1997, at the Canadian Internet community's annual conference, discussions about the growth of the Internet and electronic commerce led to the formation of the Canadian Domain Names Consultation Committee to investigate transitioning the current management of the .ca ccTLD to a means of operation more appropriate to the requirements caused by the evolving character of the Internet. Following a public consultation, the Committee recommended that a private-sector, not-for-profit corporation be set up to take over the administration of .ca. On 30 December 1998, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) was incorporated as a not-for-profit corporation with the intention of managing the .ca ccTLD in the public interest.
In an 11 March 1999 letter, the Government of Canada gave its recognition to CIRA as the appropriate administrator of the .ca ccTLD.[5]
Rules[edit | edit source]
A .ca domain name must not, directly or indirectly:
- infringe or otherwise violate the copyright, trademark, patent or other intellectual property or other rights of any person;
- defame any person or unlawfully discriminate against any person; or
- breach any Applicable Laws.[6]
Restricted Names[edit | edit source]
CIRA will maintain a list of reserved names and a list of restricted names that are not available for registration in the CIRA Registry. These lists will include:
- the Canadian top level country code .ca and certain generic top level domain three letter names (including but not limited to .com.ca, .org.ca, .net.ca, .edu.ca, .gov.ca, .int.ca, and .mil.ca);
- the following names: village.ca, hamlet.ca, town.ca, city.ca and ville.ca;
- the names, and all abbreviations of names, of Canada and Canadian provinces and territories. CIRA will use the abbreviations officially adopted by the provinces and territories. Applicants for a fourth level domain name registration wishing to use the abbreviation for Newfoundland and Labrador as part of the domain name must use .nl instead of .nf;
- municipal names listed in the following classes in the applicable version of the Canadian Geographical Names Data Base (CGNDB): city, ville, town, village, hamlet, hameau, other municipal/district area – major agglomeration, autre zone municipale /de district – agglomerations majeure, other municipal/district area- miscellaneous and autre zone municipale/de district – divers. The Applicant for registration of a municipal name must be the corresponding government entity and the name in the registrant field for the registration of a municipal Domain Name must be the full legal name of the Applicant for registration.[6]
Characters[edit | edit source]
Domain names must be not less than two and not greater than sixty-three characters long.
No characters other than a combination of the following characters may be included in a Domain Name Registration:
- letters a through z, and the following accented characters: é, ë, ê, è, â, à, æ, ô, oe, ù, û, ü, ç, î, ï, and ÿ. Note that Domain Names are not case sensitive. This means there will be no distinction made between upper case letters and lower case letters (A = a);
- the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and/or 9; and
- the hyphen character (although it cannot be used to start or end a Domain Name).
Domain names with accented characters which share the same base are considered variants of each other and form an administrative bundle. All variants of an administrative bundle are reserved for the same Registrant. Once a domain name or a variant of the domain name is registered by a Registrant, the entire administrative bundle is reserved for that particular Registrant. Domain names in an administrative bundle must be registered by the same Registrar of Record under the same Registrant contact ID.
Domain names with accented characters are represented in the Registry with the four character special marker “xn--” at the beginning of the domain name. The limit to the length of domain names includes the four character special marker “xn--”.[6]