Iraq’s media commission and the U.S.-led administration in Iraq have filed an application to ICANN for registration of the domain code “.IQ” as Iraq’s own country code on the Internet. The Iraqi chairman of the National Communications & Media Commission, Siyamend Othman, said the .IQ domain name would allow Iraqis to stake a “virtual flag” in the worldwide Internet community. (source: USA Today)
The choice of .IQ as domain name might also have other positive implications. Other countries have seen positive effects when being given a valuable domain name. For example, the small island Tuvalu leased its Internet domain name “.tv” for $50 million in royalties over the next dozen years. And another small island, Niue, got the domain name .NU which means “now” in Swedish. In 2002, there were 140,000 .NU domains registered, of which 61 per cent came from Sweden. (source: nunames.nu)
In the knowledge society of today, will the .IQ domain be as attractive?