.nu

Internet country code top-level domain for the island state of Niue August 2023 .nu Nudomain.svg 220 20 June 1997 Country code top-level domain Active The Internet Foundation in Sweden Internet Users Society - Niue Entities connected with Niue Used for a multitude of sites, few with any connection to Niue; especially popular in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and Belgium as the word gem nu means "now" in Swedish, Danish, Dutch, and archaic Norwegian None Registrations permitted at second level Terms and conditions UDRP https://internetstiftelsen.se/en/domains/ yes 227,485 31 March 2024 Growth .nu https://internetstiftelsen.se/domaner/domannamnsbranschen/domanstatistik/tillvaxt-se/ 2024-03-31 Internetstiftelsen .nu is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) assigned to the island state of Niue. It was one of the first ccTLDs to be marketed to the Internet at large as an alternative to the gTLDs .com, .net, and .org. Playing on the phonetic similarity between nu and new in English, and the fact that gem nu means "now" in several northern European languages, it was promoted as a new TLD with an abundance of good domain names available. The .nu domain is now controlled by the Internet Foundation in Sweden amid opposition from the government of Niue. Google treats .nu as a generic top-level domain (gTLD) because "users and website owners frequently see [the domain] as being more generic than country-targeted."Managing multi-regional and multilingual sites https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192 live https://web.archive.org/web/20191005224021/https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/182192 5 October 2019 5 Oct 2019 Administration Unlike most ccTLDs, .nu is not administered by a representative of its country. In 1997, IANA awarded administration of .nu to The IUSN Foundation (formerly 'Internet Users Society - Niue'), a Massachusetts-based non-profit organisation.Murray-Atfield Yara Niue is suing a giant Swedish foundation over a domain name https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-12-10/tiny-nation-of-niue-wants-to-sue-giant-swedish-foundation/10585120 24 April 2020 ABC News (Australia)About http://www.iusn.org/about/ IUSN Foundation 24 April 2020 14 May 2023 https://web.archive.org/web/20230514092132/https://www.iusn.org/about/ dead The IUSN Foundation http://internetniue.nu/about/the-iusn-foundation/ Internet Niue 24 April 2020 19 January 2021 https://web.archive.org/web/20210119195842/http://internetniue.nu/about/the-iusn-foundation/ dead History - IUSN http://www.iusn.org/history/ IUSN Foundation 24 April 2020 28 March 2022 https://web.archive.org/web/20220328104123/https://www.iusn.org/history/ dead The administration and technical operation of the domain were transferred to The Internet Foundation in Sweden (IIS) in September 2013.https://www.iis.se/english/news/se-completes-successful-transition-of-the-nu-domain/ .SE completes successful transition of the .nu domain iis.se The IIS said that 66.7 percent of "active" .nu domains at the time were registered to Swedish users. The government of Niue has been trying to administer the .nu ccTLD since at least 2003.https://www.itu.int/itudoc/itu-t/workshop/cctld/cctld057_ww9.doc Niue ccTLD delegation issues International Telecommunication Union 4 March 2003 14 December 2023 DOChttps://www.itu.int/net/wsis/geneva/coverage/statements/niue/nu.pdf World Summit on the Information Society John Tiakia International Telecommunication Union 12 December 2003 14 December 2023 PDF In November 2018, the government of Niue initiated a lawsuit against the IIS in the Stockholm District Court to obtain control over the domain. It stated that the Foundation had "taken over Niue's .nu domain without consent in 2013", resulting in a significant loss of revenue for the country. Niue's government stated that the .nu domain was a "national asset of Niue" and had been taken over "unfairly", estimating that it had earned between $27 million and $37 million for the IIS."Niue launches legal action in Sweden over domain name", Radio New Zealand, 10 December 2018 A later estimate by Niue's legal team stated that the country had missed out on a total of 150000000 2020 during the combined time that the domain had been administered by IUSN and the IIS.Niue loses fight for internet domain 24 April 2020 https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/415055/niue-loses-fight-for-internet-domain Radio New Zealand 24 April 2020 The IIS responded by saying that "It was and is essential for the Swedish internet infrastructure that .nu works in a stable and secure way", and that it had "done the necessary investigations before deciding to become the registry in 2013, involving several leading legal specialists and a direct contact with the relevant governmental institutions". The government of Niue continues the legal discussion on two fronts: directly with ICANN to get the domain name back, and with the Swedish government to reclaim the lost profits.2020-12-16 The Government of Niue Launches Proceedings With ICANN to Reclaim Its .nu Top-Level Domain https://circleid.com/posts/20201216-government-of-niue-launches-proceedings-to-reclaim-its-domain 2023-01-23 CircleID en Toke Talagi, the Premier of Niue from 2008 to 2020, called it a form of neo-colonialism. While Niue lost its case in the lower court of Södertörns Tingsrätt, they appealed, and the court date for the appeal has been set to 19 and 20 May 2025 in Svea Hovrätt. On 5 June 2025, the Court of Appeal dismissed the appeal, confirming that The Internet Foundation in Sweden had complied with all relevant regulations in its administration of the .nu domain. The court also ruled that the foundation could not be held liable for damages under Swedish foundation law. The decision effectively ended Niue’s legal efforts in Sweden to reclaim control of the .nu domain or obtain compensation.2025-06-05 Internetstiftelsen välkomnar hovrättens dom i .nu-målet https://internetstiftelsen.se/om-oss/press/pressmeddelanden/internetstiftelsen-valkomnar-hovrattens-dom-i-nu-malet/ 2026-05-05 Internetstiftelsen sv-SE Usage of .nu The .nu domain is particularly popular in Sweden, Denmark, and the Benelux region, as gem nu is the word for "now" in Swedish, Danish and Dutch http://www.omegawiki.org/Expression:nu nu OmegaWiki 2006-07-22 2009-09-30 – an example of a domain hack. Although no nu in Norwegian is an archaic word for "now", with no nå being used instead,Det Norske Akademis ordbok https://naob.no/ordbok/n%C3%A5_2 2020-08-21 naob.no .nu was initially more popular than .no, with 43,000 .nu addresses being registered in Norway in 1999 compared to 30,000 .no ones. NO https://itavisen.no/1999/08/11/nu-storre-enn-no/ .nu større enn .no IT Avisen 11 August 1999. Partially owing to restrictive domain rules for the ccTLD assigned to Sweden, .se, .nu was used for creative marketing of websites such as www.tv.nu to show what is currently showing on TV, and in the Netherlands for websites like waarbenjij.nu (whereareyou.now). A former political party in Israel, Kulanu, used the domain www.koola.nuhttp://www.koola.nu/ Koola.nu 2022-04-30 2016-06-14 https://web.archive.org/web/20160614204442/http://www.koola.nu/ dead until its dissolution in 2020. Internationalised domains In March 2000, .NU Domain Ltd became the first TLD to offer registration of Internationalized domain names,http://www.thefreelibrary.com/.NU+Domain+Ltd+Challenges+.Com+With+Announcment+of+First+Non-English...-a059999488 NU Domain Ltd Challenges .Com With Announcement of First Non-English Internet Addresses; Microsoft endorses NUBIND as compatible with Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0, and Windows 2000 Thefreelibrary.com 2000-03-07 2009-09-30 2011-05-20 https://web.archive.org/web/20110520141613/http://www.thefreelibrary.com/.NU+Domain+Ltd+Challenges+.Com+With+Announcment+of+First+Non-English...-a059999488 dead supporting the full Unicode character set.http://www.nunames.nu/Local-Language.cfm IDN details Nunames.nu 2009-09-30 2010-02-09 https://web.archive.org/web/20100209080140/http://www.nunames.nu/Local-Language.cfm dead Unlike other TLDs, no browser plugin or punycode capable browser was required on the client side for use of these names, as .NU Domain's web servers converted and redirected any web queries issued in a variety of international character encodings. However, in March 2010, .NU Domain announced at ICANN that they had recently disabled their general wildcard domain name resolution technology, and thus were implementing IDNs only by the now standard punycode implementation, and were reducing the accepted set of IDN characters for .NU Domain names to a subset of the ISO-8859-1 western European characters.https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=560219 Mozilla - add .nu to IDN whitelist Mozilla 2010-04-19 Domain revocation policy .NU domain names are revoked without refund for displaying images of child pornography, being involved with phishing, spamming, email theft, search engine abuse, or any unlawful purpose.http://nunames.nu/about/terms.cfm NU Domain Terms and Conditions, section 12, "Acceptable Use" Nunames.nu 2009-09-30 2010-02-09 https://web.archive.org/web/20100209065647/http://www.nunames.nu/about/terms.cfm dead In February 2012, library.nu, a site listing links to scanned books, a substantial number of which are claimed to be pirated copyrighted material, went offline after a coalition of the world's largest book publishers obtained an injunction against the site. A few days later the site also had its domain name revoked by domain registrar Nunames. The domain revocation was recorded in screenshots taken at the time.http://torrentfreak.com/domain-registrar-profits-from-revoked-library-nu-domain-120224/ Domain Registrar Profits From Revoked Library.nu Domain torrentfreak.com 2012-02-24 2012-02-27 https://web.archive.org/web/20120227052658/http://torrentfreak.com/domain-registrar-profits-from-revoked-library-nu-domain-120224/ 2012-02-27 live Litigation A 2005 UDRP case regarding nudomain.comSee the WIPO Administrative Panel Decision made the assertion under "Factual background" that "The Complainants [WorldNames, Inc. and NU Domain Ltd] own and operate the .NU ccTLD". The companies in question are operating the registry for .nu on behalf of the Internet Users Society, but it is incorrect to state that they "own" the TLD, as TLDs in general are delegated and managed rather than "owned".Computerworld NZ: Niue struggles against 'digital colonialism' https://web.archive.org/web/20070911170139/http://computerworld.co.nz/news.nsf/news/6834B3C37BAF205FCC2572A7000ECB00 2007-09-11 , 27 March 2007http://www.rnzi.com/pages/news.php?op=read&id=36393 Niue government criticised over internet stance 13 November 2007 Radio New Zealand International 18 September 2011 The case does, however, point out that these companies own a registered trademark to ".nudomain" in several countries. References 2 Further reading Steinberg Philip E. Mcdowell Stephen D. Mutiny on the bandwidth: the semiotics of statehood in the internet domain name registries of Pitcairn Island and Niue New Media & Society 1 March 2003 5 1 47–67 10.1177/1461444803005001907 206725973 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444803005001907 subscription External links IANA WHOIS record for .nu .nu Domain Registry IUSN Foundation IUSN's WiFi Nation Internet Niue https://web.archive.org/web/20140926211201/http://internetniue.nu/ 2014-09-26 Niue is dead. Long live .nu!, The Register Official website of the government of Niue Category:Country code top-level domains Category:Communications in Niue Category:Internet in Sweden Category:Internet properties established in 1997