Canadian Internet Registry Authority (CIRA)

Hi everyone,
An interesting petition that was forwarded to me. Distinguishing business/non-business urls as is done in other countries, would benefit students trying to evaluate Canadian Internet resources. Read on...
Karen Hering

> From: XXXXXXXXXXXX
> Date: March 23, 2007 4:53:31 PM PST (CA)
> Subject: Please sign my petition to CIRA
>
> I've started a petition to the Canadian Internet Registry Authority
> (CIRA) to insist that they distinguish between business and non-
> business URLs as part of their duties managing the dot-ca domain
> name registration. I know that this is a rather unusual request to
> make, but this is an issue that I feel very strongly about as
> evidenced by this shameless begging email.
>
> As a professional librarian who works both at a post-secondary
> academic institution and a public library, I see on a regular basis
> that many people have trouble navigating online and often confusion
> arises when there is no distinction between the URLs of commercial
> and non-commercial entities. In other countries, it is clear when
> a website is a business as indicated by URLs that end in dot-com in
> the US and dot-co-dot-uk in the UK. In Canada, there is no
> distinction so how is the average person who may not be web-savvy
> supposed to tell the difference between the real Univ. of Calgary's
> website ucalgary.ca and the commercial site universityofcalgary.ca?
>
> I have been unable to convince CIRA by email to make a distinction
> between business and non-business URLs a part of their mandate so I
> feel that I must resort to the forum of an online petition them to
> change their minds.
>
> I hope you will take the time to read over the petition and sign
> your name to show CIRA that a significant number of Internet users
> feel that a change is in order. If you could also pass this email
> onto everyone you know, I would be very grateful.
>
> http://www.petitiononline.com/CIRA/petition.html
> Thank you very much,