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Norway bans the Dutch from using dormant .bv

The Norwegian government has intervened to prevent a deal that would have allowed the sale of .bv domain names in the Netherlands.
Norwegian ccTLD registry Norid and Dutch counterpart SIDN said a deal to start using the dormant ccTLD fell apart after the government exercised its right of veto under Norway’s domain regulations.
.bv represents Bouvet Island, the remotest island in the world. It’s a Norwegian territory in the Antarctic, uninhabited but for seals.
It’s been delegated to Norway since 1997, but has never been used.
But BV is also the Dutch acronym for “Besloten vennootschap met beperkte aansprakelijkheid”, a corporate identifier that has pretty much the same meaning as “Ltd” or “LLC”.
Clearly, there was an opportunity to make a bit of extra pocket money for both registries, had SIDN been allowed to licence the use of the ccTLD, but the government intervention has scuppered all that.
SIDN said it had planned to use .bv as “a platform for validated business data”, but that now it will try to implement that idea in .nl instead.