Dear ICANN, I'm a bit worried by the comments I can see here about the <.CAT> TLD Propposal. Which I see it has been not understood, or not read for some of the people that express a negative oppinion about it, and who thinks it's a "country domain". This TLD is fully intended to be used as an umbrella for the Catalan culture and its language. In fact, is the biggest minoritary language spoken in Europe (almost 10 million people). And we find its roots in the late 12th century (the Homilies of Organya). So with a vast tradition (more than 800 years old) and a huge culture, own tradition and literature, what this "Culture" TLD intends, is to serve to all the people who communicate themselves with the same language, (being or not Catalans, living or not in Catalonia). In any instance we have thought on having a "territorial" domain or country code. For that, the Spanish Catalan speakers, of course have the <.es> but what about the French Catalan speakers, or the Italians, or all those who live abroad in the USA and other countries. If one compare the presence of Catalan on the internet, (number of pages) will have a surprise, because is in the same order to the Spanish ones (see last Alexa report). So, in this formal petition, the Internet Society (Catalan Chapter) join together with the century old "Institute of Catalan Studies" and the CCRTV, to lead almost 2.000 other institutions and more than 50.000 individuals (who signed spontaneously with their passports and IDs, in only 15 days, without any kind of marketing). To reach another goal strongly committed with the spread of the Catalan culture, values and tradition. http://www.puntcat.org/default.asp?idioma=I It's important to note that Catalonia, has always had an entrepreneur spirit, that made to be pioneer in the networking era in Spain (early 80s) with the main node of EARN (European name for the American BITnet) in Barcelona. Our region has produced the first autonomous ISPs (1994) and its the capital of "Design", and recently named world's capital of the New Cuisine (for French cooks, look for Ferran Adria's NY Time article). We have also "exported" our April 23rd tradition, of giving one book and a rose, to the rest of the world (UNESCO), so its only for that: To keep spreading and protecting all that values, culture, language and traditions that WE (all the ones who feel, think, read, express or talk in Catalan) Want a domain which collects our culture. Nothing to do with territorial matters. Andreu Veà Internet Research, Invited Scholar Stanford University (CA, USA) andreu(at)stanford(dot)edu Co-founder and former ISOC-CAT President.