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December 5, 2000

Dot.ca Disappearance
by Barbara Fletcher


On Friday, December 1, the CIRA officially took over the dot.ca domain registry. And if you didn't re-register your dot.ca, people trying to visit your site will get a big 404.

Were you one of them? You might want to check.

If you previously owned a dot.ca and you didn't re-register it with the CIRA as of December 1, it is no longer active. This means that your site will be down and that you won't be able to receive email from that domain.

According to an article in CanadaComputes.com, approximately 45,000 previously registered dot.ca holders neglected to re-register their domain with the CIRA. That's a lot of 404s.

And not an ideal situation if you are an ecommerce site in the middle of holiday shopping season.

The re-registration period ran from September 18, 2000 until December 1, 2000 when the CIRA officially took ownership of the registry. The CIRA has agreed to accept re-registrations until January 31, 2001, but beyond that date, if you neglect to re-register your dot.ca, it becomes public domain and can be freely registered by anyone meeting the Canadian Presence Requirements.

Perhaps the CIRA didn't do an effective job of getting the word out, or perhaps existing dot.ca owners didn't really believe their domain was in jeopardy.

Or, perhaps dot.ca owners didn't think that they should have to pay a registration fee. From January 1988 until December 1, 2000 dot.ca registrations through the UBC were free, but the registration process was highly regulated and rules were stringent. Now just about any Canadian citizen can register a dot.ca -- but they have to pay the price.

If you need to re-register your dot.ca, you have until January 31. Simply select a certified registrant from the list on CIRA's web site, and follow the registration instructions on the registrant's site. You can expect to pay anything from $25 and up per year -- and some registrants offer the option to register a dot.ca for up to ten years.

The sooner you re-register you dot.ca, the sooner your site will be back up and running. And if you opt to let the January 31, 2001 deadline pass you by, www.yourname.ca might suddenly belong to someone else.