Telecommunications Act
(TCA)

The Fed­er­al Coun­cil shall reg­u­late the mod­al­it­ies for man­aging in­ter­net do­mains and their sub­or­din­ate do­main names; in do­ing so, it shall take ac­count of the rules ap­plied in­ter­na­tion­ally. It may in par­tic­u­lar:

a.

lay down the con­di­tions for the al­loc­a­tion, use, block­ing, trans­fer and with­draw­al of do­main names that are sub­or­din­ate to the do­mains that are the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the Con­fed­er­a­tion;

b.

reg­u­late the pro­cessing of per­son­al data in con­nec­tion with do­mains that fall with­in the scope of this Act, in­clud­ing the pro­vi­sion of a pub­licly ac­cess­ible data­base that guar­an­tees every­one ac­cess to in­form­a­tion about the pro­pri­et­ors of do­main names;

c.

provide for meas­ures that pre­vent the un­law­ful use of do­main names or the use of do­main names that is con­trary to pub­lic or­der, and reg­u­late co­oper­a­tion with spe­cial­ised private or pub­lic bod­ies in this sec­tor;

d.

de­term­ine the in­sti­tu­tion­al, func­tion­al and op­er­a­tion­al or­gan­isa­tion of the do­mains that are the re­spons­ib­il­ity of the Con­fed­er­a­tion;

e.

reg­u­late the man­age­ment of do­mains for which pub­lic cor­por­a­tions oth­er than the Con­fed­er­a­tion or private in­di­vidu­als res­id­ent in Switzer­land are re­spons­ible;

f.

is­sue pro­vi­sions re­lat­ing to gen­er­ic do­mains of par­tic­u­lar polit­ic­al, cul­tur­al, geo­graph­ic­al or re­li­gious sig­ni­fic­ance, provided this is ne­ces­sary in or­der to safe­guard Switzer­land’s in­terests.