.bz

This article is about the top-level domain. For the file extension, seebzip2.

.bz

Introduced	September 3, 1991(1991-09-03)
TLDtype	Country code top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	Belize Network Information Center(managed byUniversity Management Ltd
Sponsor	University of Belize
Intended use	Entities connected withBelize
Actual use	Used for a random assortment of sites, many not in Belize
Registration restrictions	None
Structure	Registrations can be made directly at the second level as well as at the third level beneath various second level labels
Dispute policies	UDRP
DNSSEC	yes
Registry website	Belizenic

.bzis theInternetcountry codetop-level domain(ccTLD) forBelize.It is administered by theUniversity of Belize.

At one point,.bzdomains were being marketed by an American company as standing for "business", and that company took legal action againstICANNin an attempt to block the.bizdomain as "unfair competition".Currently, the registry is in Belize, but is still marketing the domain outside the country as "meaning business".Internationalized domainswith a wide assortment of non-ASCII characters are also available.

Many websites in Italy use this domain, because of the abbreviation ofBolzano,the capital of the province ofSouth Tyrol,and the fact that the official abbreviation of the province is BZ. Many websites use the Italian subdomain.bz.it. Servers for theOpen SourcegameBZFlagoften use names ending in.bz.

There are somesecond-level domainsin use, however these are not required:

• com.bz (commercial)
• edu.bz (educational)
• gov.bz (government)
• net.bz (networking)
• org.bz (organizations)

It also might have use fortyposquattingfor misspellings of.bizdomains.

See also

• Internet in Belize

External links

• IANA.bz whois information
• ICANN advisory about lawsuit
• .bz Requirements and FAQs