Catalan on the Internet and the .ct and .cat campaigns

Abstract

ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, divides the World Wide Web geographically, assigning country suffixes to states to be used in web addresses for sites on their territory. This paper reports on the campaign in Catalonia to have the right to use .ct as the territorial domain name for sites in Catalonia. The bid has been countered by the central government in Madrid and the argument is ongoing. In the interim, ICANN have assigned the .cat suffix. This recognises the linguistic, cultural and ethnic group as a web entity without going as far as to give them the same web standing as a sovereign state.