.bz

Infobox Top level domain
name=.bz
background=#CCF


introduced=1991
type=Country code top-level domain
status=Active
registry=Belize Network Information Center (managed by University Management Ltd
sponsor=University of Belize
intendeduse=Entities connected with Belize
actualuse=Used for a random assortment of sites, many not in Belize
restrictions=None
structure=Registrations can be made directly at the second level as well as at the third level beneath various second level labels
document=
disputepolicy=UDRP
website= [http://www.belizenic.bz/ Belizenic] |

.bz is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Belize. It is administered by the University of Belize.

At one point, .bz domains were being marketed by an American company as standing for "business", and that company took legal action against ICANN in an attempt to block the .biz domain as "unfair competition". [cite web
accessdate=2007-11-22
url=http://www.icann.org/tlds/correspondence/esi-v-icann-13nov00.htm
title=Order in Economic Solutions, Inc. v. ICANN
date-2000-09-13
format=html
publisher=ICANN] Currently, the registry is in Belize, but is still marketing the domain outside the country as "meaning business". Internationalised domains with a wide assortment of non-ASCII characters are also available.

A lot of websites in Italy use this domain, because the abbreviation of Bolzano "(de. Bozen)" and the official abbreviation of the province of Bolzano-Bozen is BZ. Many websites use the Italian subdomain .bz.it. Servers for the Open Source game BZFlag often use names ending in .bz.

There are some second-level domains in use, however these are not required:
* com.bz (commercial)
* edu.bz (educational)
* gov.bz (government)
* net.bz (networking)
* org.bz (organizations)

References

External links

* [http://www.iana.org/root-whois/bz.htm IANA .bz whois information]
* [http://www.icann.org/announcements/icann-pr10nov00-2.htm ICANN advisory about lawsuit]