Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) local presence and eligibility requirements cross-reference

Many country-code top-level domains (ccTLDs) -- .ca, .us, .au and roughly 250 others -- restrict who may register a domain, requiring some form of local presence: citizenship, permanent residency, local incorporation, or a substitute path such as a national trademark. Each registry publishes its own eligibility policy in its own format (CIRA's page for .ca, NTIA's policy document for .us, auDA's rules document for .au), and no cross-registry table exists comparing them. Each record is one eligibility category a registry recognizes, with the specific condition quoted verbatim from the registry's own policy, plus our label for what kind of connection to the country that category actually asks for -- which is the axis a reader compares on. Answers 'can I register a .ca domain if I am not Canadian', 'what counts as US nexus for a .us domain', 'does an Australian trademark qualify me for a .au domain'. Starting slice: three registries (Canada, United States, Australia); scaling requires repeating the fetch-and-confirm process per additional registry, which is the maintenance burden that made a comprehensive cross-reference uneconomic to keep current by hand.

The data

Where this came from

Every record above links the page it was taken from and quotes the sentence that states it. These are the 3 sources this dataset was assembled from.

• cira.cahttps://www.cira.ca/en/resources/documents/domains/canadian-presence-requirements-registrants/
• auda.org.auhttps://www.auda.org.au/au-domain-names/au-rules-and-policies/au-domain-administration-rules-licensing-2/
• ntia.govhttps://www.ntia.gov/files/ntia/publications/ustld2007_34_apph_nexus.pdf

Machine-readable

• data.jsonThe whole dataset — every record with its source URL and source quote.
• Open Knowledge Format bundleOne JSON object per line — every record's frontmatter and quoted span exactly as it is held here, in one fetch.
• data.csvThe same records as one flat table, for a spreadsheet or a dataframe. The last four columns are the source URL, the quoted sentence it was read from, the date we last checked it, and which columns are our reading rather than the page's words.
• How this is made and checkedWhat "verified against source" does and does not mean.

From your own code

Same records, same quotes, without scraping the page: refsource is on PyPI and npm. Each value comes back carrying the URL it was read from and the sentence on that page that states it — .source and .quote sit on the value itself rather than in a side channel, so the checking step is available instead of skipped.

pip install refsource
refsource lookup cctld-local-presence-eligibility-cross-reference registry_category="Aboriginal Peoples"

npx -y refsource lookup cctld-local-presence-eligibility-cross-reference registry_category="Aboriginal Peoples"

Set your AI assistant up to use this

Two files and no account. Put this in .mcp.json at the root of your project — Claude Code, Cursor, Windsurf, VS Code and Codex all read that file — and your assistant can look this dataset up instead of recalling it. The server is remote, keyless and read-only.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "referencesource": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://referencesource.org/mcp"
    }
  }
}

Add to Cursor · or, on the command line: claude mcp add --transport http referencesource https://referencesource.org/mcp --scope project

Then one line in the project's CLAUDE.md or AGENTS.md, so the assistant knows when to reach for it:

When a question needs "Country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) local presence and eligibility requirements cross-reference", call the referencesource MCP server at https://referencesource.org/mcp (tool `search_records`, dataset_slug `cctld-local-presence-eligibility-cross-reference`) instead of answering from memory — every record it returns carries its source URL and a verbatim quote from that page.

What each tool does, and the servers built over single registers: Connect your AI assistant.

39 records. last verified against source 2026-08-26. due for re-check by 2027-08-26.

Licence. Registry policy documents cited for their facts (eligibility conditions), not reproduced in full