I was browsing around a website earlier today that offers registration of .ca domain names. I skimmed down through the personal details form, and saw an item I hadn’t seen on any domain registration sites before. At once, the section’s title told me why: it was asking for information specific to CIRA, which limits new registrants for the .ca domain to those that are Canadian citizens, or corporations that operate within Canada, etc. In fact, there is quite a lengthy list of qualifications that makes one eligible to purchase a .ca domain name, as you can see in this screenshot taken from the website in question (links to a larger version):

Everything in the list makes perfect sense, except… “Her Majesty the Queen”? That’s actually an option in a form’s dropdown menu for some buycanadiandomainnameshere.ca website? I assume that it must be required by CIRA in order for the reseller to become properly certified, but that still seems like a really, really odd option for CIRA to require of every reseller of .ca domain names. Realistically, how often does Her Majesty fire up her iMac (because royalty using Macintosh computers just seems to make sense) and look for new domain names for a killer blog idea she (She?) just thought up? In fact, forget the “realistically” qualifier, because bureaucracy isn’t always affected by reality. Even theoretically, if Her Majesty wanted a website in the .ca domain - couldn’t CIRA just slip her one or two free of charge? Even if we believe that She is surfing around looking for great deals on domain registrations, are we also to believe that She couldn’t just phone up the Minister of whatever, or even the Prime Minister himself, and politely ask for a freebie? Is anyone seriously going to send the Royal frickin’ Queen, Her Majesty Elizabeth II, an invoice for $11.95? And more importantly, would she be charged the extra 7% for GST?

It opens a whole floodgate of curiosities, really: she couldn’t use the “mother’s maiden name” security question, but what might she put down as her “favourite pet”? Would her password just be an english word, or alphanumeric? Would she opt-in to the hosting plan as well, or just want the straight up domain registration? I’m tempted to find a 1-800 number for CIRA to see what kind of answers I would get to these, and many more rib-tickling inquiries. Doubly tempting but perhaps illegal, is to spend the $11.95 in order to find out what happens if you select the “Her Majesty” option on the website’s form.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 17th, 2006 at 3:03 pm and is filed under Geeky. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.