Stop 100 people on the street anywhere in Canada and ask them to finish the phrase “www-dot something-dot-what?”
Chances are all of them will say “dot com.” Do the same experiment in Australia and at least some of them will probably come up with “dot-com-dot-au.”
So, Canadians who cheer themselves hoarse for Team Canada at the Olympics or the World Cup of Hockey seem to suddenly lose their patriotic streak when they register domain names.
To improve the image of our “made in Canada” dot-ca domains, a big slice of the board of directors of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) appeared last week at a public forum in Calgary. Bernard Turcotte, CIRA’s president and CEO, says the advantages of dot-ca over dot-com include getting a shorter name and to set yourself aside from the masses in the dot-com world. “It allows Canadians to have their own presence on the Internet,” he says, “and to tell the world that they are Canadian.”
Perhaps the strongest argument is that you can still get really good dot-ca names. CIRA has only officially existed since 2000, though there were volunteers doing the job before that. To get an idea of what’s available, take a look at the list of recently abandoned dot-ca domains, posted at the CIRA website.
These are domains that somebody once registered, but neglected to pay the annual upkeep, which currently ranges from $12 to $50 depending on your choice of registrar. If you move fast, you might grab actionauto.ca, lifedrawing.ca, or even homescanada.ca. If you tastes are more esoteric, soulfire.ca and snowblowersun limited.ca have also just become available.
There are some more profound reasons for choosing dot-ca, perhaps in parallel with a dot-com registration. It will prevent a competitor from grabbing the dot-ca version of your name at some time in the future. If that happened, you might be able to wrestle it back under CIRA’s dispute resolution policy, especially if you own a trademark. But who needs that hassle?
Another advantage of dot-ca is that Canadian rules and policies apply, so if something goes wrong, you won’t need to hire U.S. or offshore legal counsel.
Turcotte showed the group an object lesson from November 2003 that poked a little fun at Microsoft’s expense. Apparently somebody neglected to renew the domain name hotmail.co.uk, and it became available on the open market. A private individual snapped it up and, being public spirited, transferred it back to the software colossus. Let’s hope he got a free Xbox or, heaven forbid, free new versions of Windows for life. So watch your expiry dates, because the registrars do indeed release your domains if you don’t pay up.
According to CIRA, there are currently 450,000 dot-ca names registered, versus more than 20 million dot-coms. To put this in perspective, Australia, with a population of just under 20 million (versus Canada’s 32.5 million), claims 390,000 dot-au registrations.
Of course, many big companies such as Canadian Tire try to simply register both the dot-ca and dot-com versions of their name, and make the content identical. Things get more complex for companies such as Sears and Wal-Mart, with stores in both countries. Their dot-com and dot-ca sites are completely different.
Ah, then there’s Costco.
A call to its Canadian department in Ottawa produced the party line that “the official corporate website is Costco.com,” i.e., the site of the U.S. parent, which also has information for other countries. While Costco does have costco.ca registered, there’s nothing there just yet. “That will be coming soon,” said the techie who answered the phone.
But the plot thickens. A Calgarian named Robert Montgomery of Realm Solutions Ltd. has registered costcocanada.ca. His dot-ca site is at least working and provides links to a lot of Costco’s competitors. He says “we wanted to provide a landing page for people who type in costcocanada looking for information, so at least they would get something. We only make money if the links we display are relevant to what the person was looking for, and they click through on them.”
Costco’s lawyers have not yet returned my calls about this, so stay tuned as this one plays out.
In case you want to play the game of “who owns this dot-ca website,” all you have to do is visit the CIRA website and put the domain name into the “whois” box. So we learn that cnnheadlinenews.ca belongs to Turner Broadcasting System of Atlanta, Georgia, as we might expect. But cnn.ca was registered by Canada News Network of Toronto.
While not all these conflicts will come to fisticuffs or lawsuits, you can be sure that some will. And if you think sorting all this out is easy, read up on the case of poor Mr. Uzi Nissan, founder and president of Nissan Computer Corp. He registered nissan.com first, but a certain Japanese automaker thought it should have it, and sued him, reportedly seeking $10 million in damages. In a solution worthy of King Solomon, or perhaps Homer Simpson, the United States District Court in Los Angeles issued a ruling on Nov. 14, 2002 ordering that nobody gets the site for commercial purposes. It has now been converted to non-commercial use.
Almost everyone at the CIRA forum agreed that the future looks bright for our Maple-Leaf-Flag-Waving domain. Registrations renewals are running at 76 per cent, versus 55 to 60 per cent for dot-coms, probably because of the flameouts who can’t afford the renewal fee.
A study by market researchers The Strategic Counsel in 2001 showed that 71 per cent of Canadians prefer to visit dot-ca websites. And, the experts pointed out that the dot-ca system is robust and ready for such technological innovations as longer Internet Protocol addresses and Electronic Numbering (ENUM) that merges the telephone number system with the Internet domain name system.
So, with the holiday gift- buying season getting under way, what better bauble for that special someone than a domain name such as iloveyouhoney.ca or youaremysunshine.ca?
Those were both available, when I last checked, in dot-ca – but not dot-com.
As the Red Rose tea ad said, “Only in Canada.”
(Tom Keenan is a professor at the University of Calgary and an expert on technology and its social implications. He can be reached at keenan@businessedge.ca)
