Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2011/09/26/dotscot_domain_name_campaign_letter_to_culture_secretary/

.Scot campaign seeks UK Gov backing

Scots say domain will pay for itself

By Anna Leach

Posted in Legal, 26th September 2011 11:38 GMT

The Scottish government has asked the UK culture minister to back its bid for a .scot domain when applications for new top-level domain names open in January.

In a letter sent to Ed Vaizey today, Alex Neil, Cabinet Secretary for Infrastructure and Capital Investment in Scotland, said that the .scot domain would bring together "a worldwide family of Scots" and give them a place "to demonstrate that identity online".

The new domain would pay for itself too, claims Neil, "we believe there is strong demand for a dot-scot domain and that it should be run as a public resource on a not-for-profit basis that will quickly become self financing."

The Scottish government has officially thrown its backing behind DSR, the Dot Scot Registry, a campaign group that has been preparing its bid for the domain since it was announced two years ago that new TLDs would be introuduced.

Starting January 2012, there will be a three-month window for people to bid for new top-level domains. Applications have to be made through ICANN, the International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

Hundreds of bids for domains are expected to be submitted, including dotNYC, dotLondon, dotBerlin, and dotCymru in a process that will expand greatly the number of domains or web addresses available to internet users. ®