Your PuntuEus domain
2015/01/01 Roa Zubia, Guillermo - Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria
PuntuEus is not a normal domain in terms of meaning. It is the domain of Basque and Basque culture, it has a special meaning. That is why we are carrying out surveillance or management tasks. From the operating point of view is a first order domain, such as .com or .net, which works just like them. This means that you will buy it, buy it, the same as you would buy a .com, to a registrar. On the Internet there are countless companies dedicated to it, and you have to buy the domain name to one of them and not to us. There is normality.
To date, the implementation of the start-up process has been a work of the PuntuEus Foundation and from now on, our work is to promote: Ensure the presence in the .eus domain network and ensure its suitability. That is, ensuring that the one taking the .eus domain name meets our requirements. And our conditions are simple: that the web is also in Basque significantly, or that, if you do not have Basque, it is about Basque culture.
There is a Central Entity, ICANN, which grants permissions for the management of Internet domains. Sets the rules of the game. I say they are from God and we bishops, more or less (laughing). ICANN has accepted the existence of the .eus domain and has given its consent to the PuntuEus Foundation for the management of the .eus domain. In the category of cultural domains, PuntCat was a pioneer worldwide 7 years ago.
No. It is not a geographical domain, it is a community domain. That is, .eus does not belong to the Autonomous Community of the Basque Country, to the Basque Country, or to a specific geographical area. It is for a community, for the community of Basque and Basque culture. This is much broader than geographical limits.
For us .eus is an integrative domain, in which one is represented within that community. Each one says that “I am part of that community and I am part of it: because I am a company, because I am an individual, because I feel Basque or because I have a link with Basque culture”. That is, .eus is universal in that sense.
Until December 3, there have been two phases in the process of implementing .eus, agreed with ICANN, to ensure that things were going to be done well. The normal operation of the Internet domain names is that you buy it the first one that requests it. If by the time PuntuEus emerged we had activated it, we would enter into a conflict. Because they could go in to buy pirates before anyone else, domain names of public entities, municipalities and well-known brands, then sell them more expensive. To avoid this, a few phases were agreed. The first phase was the most pioneering. In the pioneering phase, 92 domain names were assigned, in which the character of community to which I referred was intended. Among these leaders were companies, institutions, small towns, media... He wanted to show that photo.
The second phase was the implementation. During this period any person could receive a .eus domain name, but with special conditions. The domain name was not assigned to the first one that arrived. The names were assigned according to a protocol agreed with ICANN, based on priority categories. For example, if in this phase you requested donostia.eus the opening of a blog in Basque for your cat, and the City Council of San Sebastian, the domain name that was to be for the City Council, even if your request is the first. Thus, 1,192 domain names were assigned.
This phase was closed and from 3 December the domain name is for the first one to arrive. In this phase, if the owner makes a correct use of the .eus domain, we have no competence to decide who to assign the domain name.
In fact, on December 3, 2000 the .eus domain names arrived and we finished 2014 with more than 2,500.
We have heard a lot that the domain name is expensive and I will not deny that it is more expensive than the rest. But there is a reason for it. It is no more expensive, as some have accused us, because it is in Basque. The price of the domain name is put by the registrar associated with some features: A simple .com domain name can be for 10 euros and .eus is more expensive as average about 50 euros. It is more expensive than the rest because there is a foundation to manage the .eus domain, a structure and we also have to pay some licenses to ICANN, technology platforms… We fund this structure through the sale of domain names. In the end, registrars pay us so much for each domain name they sell.
This means that the success of .eus will be cheaper and cheaper. We just started and right now we have no critical mass to offer domain names at 10 euros. Our goal is not to earn money, our goal is to maintain the structure and promote .eus. So with the passage of time, as there is more .eus, the price goes down. However, 50 euros a year does not seem to me a barbarity. The problem is in comparison. There are millions of .com, it has many years of travel and we can not compete with them at market prices. The purchaser must put in value the PuntuEus domain. I think PuntuEus is a special domain and has value.
