Announcement

ISNIC has suspended domains that were used for the website of a known terrorist organisation. The majority of ISNIC's board made this decision today, on the grounds of Article 9 of ISNIC's Rules on Domain Registration, which states: "The registrant is responsible for ensuring that the use of the domain is within the limits of Icelandic law as current at any time."

Never before has ISNIC suspended a domain on grounds of a website's content.

Updated 2014-10-13 13:00 Added link to Isnic Rules

Nameserver Registration

Please note that all nameservers, used to host .is-domains, must be registered with ISNIC.

If the nameservers, on which you wish to host your .is domains, are not already registered with ISNIC, you must ask your your hosting company, i.e. internet service provider, to register them with ISNIC. This is done  here: https://www.isnic.is/en/host/new. The registration is of course free of charge.

Your service provider then automatically becomes your domain's "Zone Contact" towards ISNIC. The Zone Contact must have full authority over the nameservers, and be both willing and able to remedy all technical problems with all .is-domains hosted on his nameservers.

Please read ISNIC's tech. requirements and see where to Register nameserver by ISNIC if you intend to host and serve .is-domains, one of the most secure and clever Top Level Domains (TLD's) on the internet.

Any questions? please ask Google or use our webchat "Svarbox®", here on isnic.is.

The .is team have a Monday off today

ISNIC's office is closed today, first Monday in August - the Merchants holiday in Iceland. We will be back on Tuesday.

You can register and manage your .is-domain online, as usually, by logging into your account here on isnic.is. If you have forgotten your username (NIC-handle) and PW, just type the name of your domain(s) in the big search window and then press the Lost password link located by your email-address. 

The ISNIC team will be back for you on August 5. - nine o'clock sharply.

SysAdmin day

Do you think of your system admin? For the past 14 years, the last friday of July is celebrated as System Administrators Day. Go to http://sysadminday.com/ for more information and suggestions.

Domain suspensions considered harmful

Registries are often asked to suspend domains linked to websites that the police considers illegal or companies and institutions belive to infringe on their intellectual rights.

The 26th of May 2014 torrentz.eu was suspended in response to a request by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit in the UK, without a court order. The operators of the website immediately registered, with different top-level domains, five new domains where the website was accessible. The original domain was then unsuspended briefly after it had been suspended.

Domains are used for much more than to address websites. Email is always sent using a domain, and domains are often used to connect users to their home and work networks. Domains can hardly be considered illegal any more than a street address. A street address is not illegal even if there is illegal activity in one apartment at the address. When a domain is suspended the website or the content itself is not, as became apparent when torrentz.eu was suspended. A suspension of a domain does not lead to a total blocking of the website it points to.

When domains are suspended, as described above, it does not only indignate the website's visitors, but it also disrupts email and other services, which are unrelated to the website, that the domain facilitates. Disruption of email communication and service, unrelated to the website that is meant to be closed, is utterly unnecessary and unacceptable in these instances. A suspension of a domain is in a way comparable to banning the use of an address of an apartment building depriving everyone at that particular address of their postal service. Additionally, the suspension of individual domains can affect other domains, specially in the situation when domain service is a registered subdomain.

Finally, it should be noted that when registries and registrars are made to suspend domains it can create negative publicity within the internet community, harming the top-level domain and reducing its credibility. It is difficult to rectify that sort of damage that easily could be avoided with increased awareness and proficiency of the technical workings of the internet.

A .is domain has never been shut down on court order in spite of several attempts.