.cat
 |
|
| Introduced | 2005 |
|---|---|
| TLD type | Sponsored top-level domain |
| Status | Active |
| Registry | Associació puntCAT |
| Sponsor | Fundació puntCat |
| Intended use | Catalan linguistic and cultural community |
| Registered domains | 83,300 (December 2014) |
| Registration restrictions | Screening is done both before and after registration to ensure registrants are part of applicable community |
| Structure | Direct second-level registrations are allowed |
| Documents | ICANN New sTLD RFP Application |
| Dispute policies | UDRP, Charter Eligibility Dispute Resolution Procedure (CEDRP), Compliance Reconsideration Policy (CRP) |
| Website | www.Domini.cat |
| DNSSEC | Yes |
.cat (Catalan pronunciation: [ˈpunt ˈkat]) is a sponsored top-level domain intended to be used to highlight the Catalan language and culture. Its policy has been developed by ICANN and Fundació puntCAT. It was approved in September 2005.
Before .cat was available, and given the reluctance of certain Catalan institutions, companies, and people, to use .es, .ad, .fr, .it domains (depending on the state respectively) for their domains, alternatives emerged. An example of this was the website for the city of Girona in Catalonia, which preferred to use a .gi domain ("http://www.ajuntament.gi/", the word "ajuntament" meaning both "city council" and "town hall"), even though .gi is the country code for Gibraltar, instead of the corresponding .es as a Spanish local authority.
To solve this matter, in September 2005 the .cat TLD was approved, designed to meet the wishes and needs of the Catalan linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. This community is made up of those who use Catalan for their online communications, and/or promote the different aspects of Catalan culture online and prefer it to any other domain. The initial registration period went from February 13, 2006, to April 21, 2006. The registry was open to everybody starting April 23, 2006.
The .cat domain is not territorial, but applies to the whole Catalan-speaking community, whether or not a site is based in Spanish Catalonia. In order to be granted a .cat domain, one needs to belong to the Catalan linguistic and cultural community on the Internet. A person, organization or company is considered to belong if they either:
Despite the restrictions, the domain has been exploited for feline-related domain hacks.
...
Wikipedia