.bv

History

Bouvet Island is an uninhabited volcanic island in the South Atlantic Ocean. It was claimed by Norway in 1927. The domain was allocated on 21 August 1997, at the same time .sj was allocated for Svalbard and Jan Mayen. The allocation occurred because the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) assigns ccTLDs to all entities with an ISO 3166 code, for which Bouvet Island is designated BV.

In March 2012, Norid began an initial collaboration with the Dutch domain registry SIDN, with the purpose of examining the possibility of utilizing the .bv domain on the Dutch market. BV is the most common form of limited company in the Netherlands, which could have made .bv a popular domain. The collaboration ended in June 2016, when The Ministry of Transport and Communications advised that dispensation from certain parts of the Norwegian Domain Regulations, which would have opened for the sale of the .bv domain, should not be granted.

In June 2015, Norwegian computer scientist Håkon Wium Lie and the Socialist Left Party proposed using the .bv domain, along with .sj, as online free havens. The proposal aims at protecting both the Norwegian authorities and foreign dissidents from surveillance.