is-domain Domain

The domain extension .is is the country-specific top-level domain from Iceland, which exists since November 1987 and is administered by the registry ISNIC.

Iceland is an island state, which is very sparsely populated and is located in the outer northwest of Europe. The country has an area of approximately 103,000 square kilometres and is thus the second largest island state in Europe after the United Kingdom.
Iceland has only 356,991 inhabitants and with its population density of 3.5 inhabitants per km² is one of the least populated countries in the world and one of the least populated countries in Europe. The capital of Iceland is Reykjavík, which has about 128,000 inhabitants.

A special feature of the allocation of Icelandic domains is that they are always registered at the second level. For this reason, additional domain extensions such as .edu, .org, .gov, .net and .com are blocked. These additional extensions are required for governmental institutions and organizations. Otherwise there are no major restrictions for .is domains. A registration does not require a permanent residence or company headquarters in Iceland. The only thing that domain holders have to submit is a so-called agent. This agent can also come from abroad, but must be officially accredited by the registry.

Due to the country's small population and the low international distribution of the domain, there are only 55,000 registered Icelandic domains according to current figures. Iceland is very liberal with regard to the award criteria for its top level, but entries with obvious sexual or terrorist content are not allowed. Thus it came about that the Islamic terrorist organization "Islamic State" wanted to register an .is domain in October 2014. This was immediately blocked by the ISNIC. So far this was the only time that an Icelandic domain had to be blocked or deleted due to its content.

Due to the low number of registrations of the .is domain, the international relevance of this domain is very limited. The few domains that exist are limited to residents of Iceland and companies located there.