Cymru - its Sister Nations and the Internet

There are a number of campaigns for the Celtic Dot domain, dot.cym, dot.ker and dot.gal to name three proposals and now the campaigns within the Celtic nations are linking up. There is strength in numbers, and collaboration and solidarity among these nations can only be a good thing. Here is a posting from Cornubian on the Cornish Democrat blog :

A web domain name for Kernow

So what about a ".ker" or ".cor" internet domain name for the Duchy?

Taken from the eurominority website.

Penygroes, Sunday, 12 August 2007 Une contribution de Huw Jones
The dots join up! Web domain campaigns to work together


Campaigners for web domains for Brittany, Galizia, the Basque Country and Wales are to meet in September in Santiago de Compostela (Galizia) to look into the possibility of a coalition of bids to the administrators of the Word Wide Web.

They have been inspired by the resounding success of the '.cat' domain for Catalan websites. There has been a 33% increase in the use of the Catalan language on the web since it was established last year, with over 22,000 websites using '.cat'. The leader of the '.cat' campaign, Amadeu Abril, has been extremely active in supporting and advising the other countries.
The campaigns in Brittany, Galizia and Wales have all succeeded, not only in gaining considerable support, but also in their aims of being non party political and inclusive. All three have avoided the controversy which often occurs when countries who do not have their own state attempt to gain forms of independent status.

Nearly 15,000 signatures have been collected by the Breton '.bzh' campaign and Nicolas Sarkozy has come out in favour. In Galizia the Partido Popular (The Spanish Conservative Party) have lent their support to '.gal'. Although the campaigns have been voluntary the applications will not succeed if there is opposition from governments.

In Wales all parties in the National Assembly support '.cym', and the London government's Department of Trade and Industry has stated that they "do not see any reason for opposing the application" so long as steps are taken to prevent cybersquatting - the malicious practice of setting up web names that are similar to those of well know companies or brands.

Wales has won official status for her language over the past 30 years, but there is concern regarding the way in which many Welsh speakers take for granted that English is the only language of information technology in the same way English was considered to be the only language of education, broadcasting and government in the past. According to Dewi Bryn Jones of the Welsh Software Association the hope is that '.cym' will "add to peoples' expectations of seeing Welsh on the screen". (Eurolang 2007)

Web Domain Campaigns:
Galizia: http://www.puntogal.org/web/
Flanders: http://www.puntvl.net/
Brittany: http://bzh.geobreizh.com/www/bzh/
Wales: http://www.dotcym.org

Administrators of the World Wide Web:Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers: www.icann.org