By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer
Then there's ".aq" for Antarctica, a land with more penguins than computers.
About 250 country-code domain names exist for various nations or territories around the world, used as suffixes in the Internet addresses crucial for computers to find Web sites and route e-mail. Outside the United States, these suffixes are often preferred over the global "" as a source of national pride.
But deciding who gets to have one — or keep one — can be tricky.
The Internet's key oversight agency, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, allocates domains based on standards set by the International Organization for Standardization, which in turn takes information from the United Nations.
That's how the Palestinian territories got ".ps" in 2000. That's why East Germany's ".dd" disappeared after reunification with its western neighbor in 1990.
But change doesn't always come easily, as ICANN officials are finding with their efforts to dissolve the Soviet Union's ".su" domain, 16 years after the communist regime's collapse. Many Internet users and entrepreneurs have resisted the transition to domains assigned to individual republics, such as ".ru" for Russia.
The phase-out of Yugoslavia's ".yu" is only now beginning, five years after the country dissolved following civil war.
The federation of Serbia and Montenegro, formed from the remnants of Yugoslavia in 2003, had been given ".cs," which once belonged to Czechoslovakia. But before anyone could use it, the country further split into Serbia and Montenegro.
It'll take at least another year and a half for ".yu" users to fully transition to ".rs" for Serbia and ".me" for Montenegro, both of which were officially added in September, along with ".kp" for North Korea. Until at least Sept. 30, 2009, ".yu" sites will still work, and owners get priority registering the ".rs" or ".me" counterparts.
Likewise, ".tl" is still transitioning from ".tp" following East Timor's independence, with no new ".tp" names accepted as of 2004.
Meanwhile, ".eh" for the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara was set aside long ago, but it remains offline because two opposing groups couldn't agree on who to run it.
Others, like ".sj" for the Arctic territories of Svalbard and Jan Mayen, remain unused because of national policy — their Norwegian administrators want residents to use Norway's ".no" domain.
And ".um" got a new life only after ICANN approved its termination. Assigned for U.S. "minor outlying islands" such as the Midway Islands, ".um" wasn't being used, and its caretakers no longer wanted to bother running it. But entrepreneurs have since spun it off and are now selling names — so far, mostly as landing pages to generate advertising. ICANN still plans to delete the domain, saying the new operators are unauthorized.
Occasionally, ICANN must bend the rules and stray from the standards group.
The European Union was given ".eu" in 2005 after ICANN decided to allow codes on a separate reserved list kept by the standards body. And though the United Kingdom is officially assigned ".gb," the use of ".uk" is entrenched in British society.
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On the Net:Country-code list: http://www.iana/domains/root/db
ISO list: http://tinyurl/53vnq8
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