Norid relaunches .priv.no

On June 6th Norid will relaunch the .priv.no extension. This subdomain makes it possible for Norwegian individuals to register their own Norwegian domain name. Because of the strict rules for .no, this isn’t possible directly under the top level domain.

The landrush will run from June 6th until June 14th . During that period the registry will gather all landrush requests. On June 15th they will start activating the requested names. Domain names for which more than one request was received, will be awarded via a draw (so the landrush isn’t first come – first served).  There will be no sunrise, so no priorities will be taken into account.

To be able to register a .priv.no domain name, you need to be a Norwegian resident registered in the National Register and at least 18 years of age. Every such registrant can own up to a maximum of 5 .priv.no domain names.

The subdomain .priv.no used to be managed by the private company “Ventelo” until 2007. They sold domain names under .priv.no as alternative extension for private Norwegians who couldn’t claim their own .no domain name because of the strict rules. Ventelo however indicated to Norid that they weren’t interesting in further maintaining that subdomain anymore and Norid took over the domain in December 2007 to relaunch it a a later time.

Due to the strict rules and the fact that it’s still “only” a .priv.no domain name and not a .no domain name, there might be only a low turnout during the landrush for these domain name. Certainly if you also take into account that some registrars offer .no domain name registrations for everybody via a local presence service.