.bz

This article is about the top-level domain. For the file extension, see bzip2.

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

.bz

Introduced	September 3, 1991 (1991-09-03)
TLD type	Country code top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	Belize Network Information Center (managed by University Management Ltd
Sponsor	University of Belize
Intended use	Entities connected with Belize
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

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". Currently, the registry is in Belize, but is still marketing the domain outside the country as "meaning business". Internationalized domains with a wide assortment of non-ASCII characters are also available.

Many websites in Italy use this domain, because of the abbreviation of Bolzano, the capital of the province of South Tyrol, and the fact that the official abbreviation of the province 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)

It also might have use for typosquatting for misspellings of .biz domains.

See also

• Internet in Belize

External links

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