Data sources and licenses
Every dataset dot.bi uses, what it is used for, and under which terms. dot.bi scrapes no third-party listings and never republishes a dataset it receives.
| Source | Used for | License / terms |
|---|---|---|
| Certificate Transparency logs (Let's Encrypt, Google) | Continuous discovery of domains that obtain a certificate, in every TLD; first and last certificate seen, issuers | Public by design |
| Registry zone files for generic TLDs (ICANN CZDS) | Exact counts per TLD, daily additions and removals, presence history of each name, the TLD list of a name | Zone file access agreement with each registry: statistics and research only, no redistribution, no marketing, no bulk registry queries |
| Country-code zones and lists published openly: .se and .nu (Internetstiftelsen), .ch and .li (SWITCH), .ee (Estonian Internet Foundation), .sk (SK-NIC), .fi (Traficom API), .fr (AFNIC open data) | Same as above, for those countries | CC BY 4.0 (.se, .nu, .ee), research and public-interest use (.ch, .li), public lists (.sk, .fi), Licence Ouverte / Etalab (.fr) |
| RDAP services of registries and registrars | Registration data, one domain per request, cached up to 7 days | Lawful use; no bulk or automated high-volume queries |
| DNS | Live records on profiles; existence checks of known names on country-code TLDs that publish no zone | Public protocol, rate-limited queries |
| Majestic Million | Seed list and “top domains” pages | CC BY 3.0 — attribution: Majestic |
| IANA root zone database and RDAP bootstrap | TLD directory, RDAP routing | Public |
| Public Suffix List | Finding the registrable domain in any hostname | MPL 2.0 |
| Team Cymru IP to ASN | Hosting network and provider | Public DNS service, non-commercial fair use |
| Wayback Machine CDX API | First capture, years archived | Public API, polite rate |
| English word list | Dictionary matching (EN) | Unlicense (public domain) |
| French word list | Dictionary matching (FR) | MIT |
What dot.bi does with zone data
Zone data is used for counts, daily differences, per-name presence history and the list of TLDs where a name exists. It appears on dot.bi only inside pages about one name or as aggregate figures. There is no list of all names in a TLD, no bulk export, and no API serving zone data. Names that leave a zone are counted, never listed, and never described as deleted or available.
Fonts and software
Instrument Sans and JetBrains Mono are used under the SIL Open Font License 1.1 and served from dot.bi itself. The site is built with Laravel and PostgreSQL.
Deliberately not used
- Enumeration of DNSSEC-signed zones (NSEC walking): not a publication by the registry, and treated as abuse by several of them.
- Expired, pending-delete and auction listings from registrars or marketplaces: redistribution rights are not granted.
- Commercial domain lists of unknown provenance, and blocklists with restrictive terms.