MSPs will be asked tonight to launch a campaign for a new internet domain name which could be immediately identified as Scottish.

A group of MSPs, set up to lobby for the Scots language, want to replace .co.uk on Scottish language and culture sites with .co.sco.

If they can convince colleagues to back the move, they will approach the US-based web name authority — the Internet Corporation on Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) — for permission. They point out that ICANN agreed to a similar move in September for Catalan language and culture organisations in Spain, which has seen these sites adopt .cat.

Rob Gibson, a Scottish National Party MSP for the Highlands and Islands, points out that it does not make much sense for promoters of the Scots language such as the Lallans Society or cultural organisations such as the Saltire Society to have a website with the domain name ending in .co.uk He said: “Changing from UK to SCO would identify a site as Scottish for anyone in the world who wants to go straight to sites for Scottish organisations. It would be an immediate identifier on the internet.”

Supporters of the idea also see it being extended to cover Burns Societies and St Andrew’s Societies throughout the world. If the change is approved by ICANN, they say it may be open for the .co.sco domain name eventually to be adopted by Scottish companies and non-cultural institutions if they are willing to say on their site that they support Scottish culture and language or sponsor an associated event.

Four years ago, an attempt by MSPs to convince Nominet, the authority that registers UK web names, to accept the domain .scot.uk failed because Nominet felt that it fragmented the UK domain name. A later attempt to use the domain address .sc also failed because this is already used by the Seychelles.

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