 | |
| Introduced | December 19, 2005; 19 years ago (2005-12-19) |
|---|---|
| TLD type | Sponsored top-level domain |
| Status | Active |
| Registry | Associació puntCAT |
| Sponsor | Fundació puntCat |
| Intended use |  Catalan linguistic and cultural community |
| Actual use | Sees some use in Catalonia and Catalan-speaking areas; occasionally sees use forwebsites related to cats |
| Registered domains | 109,110 (May 2019)[1] |
| 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) |
| DNSSEC | Yes |
| Registry website | Domini.cat |
.cat (pronounced inCatalan:punt cat[ˈpuŋˈkat]) is asponsored top-level domain intended to be used to highlight theCatalan language, developed byICANN and Fundació puntCAT.
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.[2]
An example of this was the website for the city ofGirona inCatalonia, which preferred to use a.gi domain ("ajuntament.gi", the word "ajuntament" meaning both "city council" and "town hall"), even though .gi is thecountry code forGibraltar, instead of the corresponding.es as a Spanish local authority.[3]
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 creation of the .cat domain was approved in September 2005.[4] The initial registration period went from February 13, 2006, to April 21, 2006. The registry was open to everybody starting April 23, 2006.[5]
The .cat domain is not territorial, but applies to the whole Catalan-speaking community, whether or not a site is based inCatalonia. 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:[5]
Prominent users of the domain include but are not limited toFC Barcelona,[6]Girona FC,[7]Teatre Nacional de Catalunya,[8]Ara,[9]Museu Nacional d’Art de Catalunya[10] andMuseum of the History of Catalonia.[11]
In September 2017 a Spanish court ordered that all .cat domain names that were being used to promote theCatalan independence referendum shall be taken down.[12]
On September 20 theSpanish police raided the offices of puntCAT and arrestedCTO Pep Masoliver for sedition.[13]
Following this, puntCAT released several tweets and a press statement on their website that condemned this action, calling it "shameful and degrading, unworthy of a civilized country [and] immensely disproportionate".[14]
On October 31, 2017 severalCatalan Government websites includingpresident.cat,govern.cat andcatalangovernment.eu were taken down due to thepolitical crisis in Catalonia and due to the take over of authority by theGovernment of Spain.
Despite the restrictions, the domain has been exploited forfeline-relateddomain hacks, such asnyan.cat.[15]
In September 2017, with the domain's filters weakened after the raid by Spanish police, American neo-Nazi websiteThe Daily Stormer was briefly hosted on a .cat address.[16][17]
Following the success of the .cat domain, other language and culture-based domain names have emerged, such as.eus and.gal for theBasque language andculture (Euskal Herria) and theGalician language andculture (Galicia), respectively, as well as the.bzh domain-name dedicated to theBreton language andculture inBrittany.[18][19][20]
