.la

.la is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Laos.[1][2]

.la

Introduced	1996
TLD type	Country code top-level domain
Status	Active
Registry	LA Names Corporation
Sponsor	Lao National Internet Committee
Intended use	Entities connected with Laos
Actual use	Marketed as domain for Los Angeles
Registration restrictions	None; some names are reserved as "premium names" at extra cost
Structure	Registrations are taken directly at the second level
Documents	ICANN .la MoU
Dispute policies	UDRP
DNSSEC	yes
Registry website	www.la

.ລາວ

Sponsor	Lao National Internet Center (LANIC)
Intended use	Entities connected with  Laos

Although the .la domain is officially assigned to the country of Laos, subdomains have been delegated to some organizations outside Laos.

The domain is used by organizations in the state of Louisiana and the city of Los Angeles.[3] No official or unofficial association exists between the .la domain and any government in the United States (see .gov and .org).

The .la domain is also used for domain hacks in the French language and the Chinese language. là means "there" in French and in Italian, and in other Romance languages; "啦" (pinyin: la) is a common modal word at the end of a sentence or a phrase in Mandarin Chinese and Cantonese.

Mozilla Foundation's URL shortener uses it with the "mzl.la" domain hack.[4]

Tesla Motors uses "ts.la" domain hack as a shortener and a redirect.[5]

Digikala, the largest e-commerce startup in Iran and the Middle East uses "dgka.la" domain hack as a shortener.

The Network information center of .la is oriented to pages based in Los Angeles.[6]

Intel Latin America uses intel.la.

The Digital Public Library of America uses dp.la.

History

The LA Names Corporation, based in Guernsey, has gained the rights to market .la registrations, and they had used the registry services of Afilias and, formerly, the registrar services of DreamHost. However, DreamHost has discontinued registrar services as of May 2006. LA Names and CentralNic, Ltd. completed the transfer of the .la domain name to the CentralNic system in 2007.[7] Cabel Sasser of Panic created "Poopla" (xn--ls8h.la), "The World's First Emoji Domain" on April 13, 2011.[8] A company out of Hong Kong by the name of sterling Holding originally purchased the Tld from Laos. Marketed it to Louisiana and LA.

Lao language domain

In 2008 a preliminary application was made to open the internationalized top level domain .ລາວ (the name of Laos in the Lao language).[9] In 2019 this top level domain was approved. Web sites will come at a later stage. It is intended for usage with domain names in Lao script.

References

1. "National Portal of Lao PDR". Archived from the original on 2013-10-22. Retrieved 2013-07-04.
2. https://www.iana.org/domains/root/db/la.html
3. Maierbrugger, Arno (10 July 2013). "Laos rents '.la' Internet domain to Los Angeles businesses". Inside Investor. Archived from the original on 2013-07-15. Retrieved 11 July 2013.
4. "880974 – adding a tinyurl.com link is blocked as spam at wiki.mozilla.org". mozilla.org.
5. "Tesla Motors - Premium Electric Vehicles". ts.la.
6. http://www.nic.la redirects to https://www.la/. Page https://www.la/e/about uses the slogan "The Internet Address For Los Angeles".
7. "Los Angeles Has Its Own Domain Name". Marketwire.
8. "The World's First Emoji Domain". Panic Blog. Panic. Retrieved 31 August 2017.
9. IDN ccTLD Form of Interest | Laos

External links

• IANA .la whois information