.cc
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| Introduced | 1997 |
|---|---|
| TLD type | Country code top-level domain |
| Status | Active |
| Registry | eNIC (a VeriSign company) |
| Sponsor | Island Internet Services |
| Intended use | Entities connected with Cocos Islands |
| Actual use | A varied assortment of sites, few of them relating to those islands |
| Registration restrictions | None |
| Structure | Registrations permitted at second level |
| Documents | Registration agreement |
| Dispute policies | UDRP |
| Website | Verisign .cc Registry |
.cc is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Cocos (Keeling) Islands, an Australian territory of 5.4 square miles (14 km2; 1,400 ha) and about 600 inhabitants. It is administered by a US company, VeriSign, through a subsidiary company eNIC, which promotes it for international registration as "the next .com"; .cc was originally assigned in October 1997 to eNIC Corporation of Seattle, Washington, by the IANA.
The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus — a country the UN does not recognise (they consider it to belong to the republic of Cyprus) — also uses the .cc domain, along with .nc.tr.
With the help of SamsDirect Internet, eNIC managed and marketed the top level domain with great success to become the "second largest TLD registry in the United States second only to Verisign" according to Brian Cartmell, founder and CEO of eNIC, who testified before the United States Senate in regard to The Governance of the Domain Name System by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers on February 4, 2001. Much of the success of the domain sales came as a direct result of Sams entering into a deal with the largest radio broadcaster in the United States, Clear Channel (CC) Communications, to advertise and promote the domain on several hundred radio stations over a three-month period.
Registration is made directly at second-level.
The .cc domain is preferred by many cycling clubs, as well as churches and Christian organizations, since "CC" could be an abbreviation for "Christian Church" or "Catholic Church". Some open-source/open-hardware projects, such as the Arduino project, use a .cc for their home pages, since "CC" is the abbreviation for "Creative Commons", whose licenses are used in the projects. Business owners in Southern Massachusetts are rapidly adopting Cape Cod CC domains for local identity. Canadian Club whiskey has also used .cc domains for marketing purposes.
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