Securing Your Domain Against Seizure: Where Is Safe to Register a Domain Name?

> Think you're going to get funding and grow your company with a foreign TLD doing something that the US government might disapprove of?

The web's biggest sites right now (e.g. YouTube and Facebook) are doing things the U.S. government doesn't approve of. They haven't been shut down ... yet ... but Megaupload has, and what's the functional difference between what Megaupload does and what YouTube does?

My point is just that the way the U.S. gov't is going, no decent web application is safe from being taken down. Anything with user-generated content is basically wide open for seizure.

>Agree. And all of this is ridiculous anyway. A non-issue for the vast majority of startups who want to do something in the US. Think you're going to get funding and grow your company with a foreign TLD doing something that the US government might disapprove of?

You probably still want to check out your registrars reputation (and put valid info in the whois.) If your registrar has a 'shoot first and ask questions later' attitude, well, you are a lot more screwed than if, say, your web hosting provider is the same.

I mean, the article focuses on choosing your registry, but the registrar is the first point of contact for anyone trying to shut you down. Last time I looked (a few years back) to set up a registrar, you needed to pay a couple kilobucks annually to the registry, plus an additional $6.25 for every .com address you register... every year. With those kinds of costs, and the under $10/year price expectation of consumers, it doesn't take many complaints before what you have to pay humans to read them exceeds the amount of profit you could hope to derive from the customer. Reputation is the only motivation that business would have to do anything besides ignore the complaints until they could not be ignored any more, and then shut down the domain.

And valid contact info is important. You want people to complain to you, not your provider. Most of the time, the powers that be won't move without warning. I mean, yeah, depending on what you are doing, being contactable might not help and might even hurt, but for most things that are at least semi-legitimate, and certainly for anything you want to get venture funding for, being contactable helps a lot.

On that note, if you have /any/ user generated content of any type, pay your hundred bucks and get on the US 'Directory of Service Provider Agents for Notification of Claims of Infringement'

I mean none of this helps if the feds are really after you. But really, I don't know what would, in that case. Best you can hope for is to clear things up so that in the borderline cases they send you scary lawyer letters rather than shutting you down.

Is .io secure from seizure?

They didnt fold when the EU tried to get them to increase tax rates on companies like Google and Intel though did they.

I'm not so sure how relevant the economic strength of a nation is in this decision.

It was not that long ago that Ireland was seen as a booming example of economic growth. In a relatively short term that boom has turned sour.

The selection of a domain name is an integral part of your brand and that is LONG term.

Therefore short term fluctuations in economic success should play a muted part in your domain name decision.

The bottom line here is that the direct US controlled TLDs of .com, .net and .org are now slowly becoming poisonous in the branding decision for any company that may risk annoying the RIAA or MPAA with their new "fangled" business model that disrupts the existing media space or their profit margin (or perceived profit margin) in any way.

The US is shooting itself in foot, but personally I find that a good thing. I see this as a great step in reducing the prominence (and worth) of the core TLDs and ICANN.

I find it quite interesting that when it comes to .com names in particular we are coming towards a point where the saturation is so great, there are no viable domains left. Since land is not ubiquitous, saturation means that you are limited to trading those existing properties only, whilst with domain names, we can create a new TLD and start over again. It is like being able to create new land.

As a further analogy, we discover a new M class planet and some of us brave new worlders start moving there. Everyone living on Earth things we are mad (wtf, they have no Starbucks), but who cares right, we have a virgin planet to discover and plenty of new land to stake our claim upon. We get to choose the best bits of land for ourselves before all those Earthlings get fed up of living in their over-populated land and jump on star ships to join us.

Pie in the sky here, but I never understood why we didn't just drill big holes in the sides of volcanoes, drop a boiler in it, and stick a turbine on top with a radiator/condenser outside. Seems like a pretty easy source of "free" electricity.

Oh, I agree, it's not so much that either country is a bad choice per se. And pointing out that a country subject to various bilateral treaties might provide problems down the road is also fair.

Just thought i'd point it out for those that might not know about their degree of international collaboration.

However, especially Sweden is ambiguous at best in my opinion, given their recently enacted strong wiretapping laws. They might not be a problem yet, but they provide the basis for future trouble.

Their customer is abysmal. They never respond on Twitter—fair enough, other registrars do, though—and it took four days to get a response to why I couldn’t log in. I even had to go through weird escalations to higher “tiers” of support.

If someone knows a good non-American registrar with a wide selection of domains who also has two-factor authentication like Name.com, please let me know. Until then, I’ll probably just postpone the domain purchases.

This could be a plus, you can register reallno.bs :-) All jokes aside, according to their site, .bs is not on the list of the available TLD you can register with them

.pirate?

Ok, thank you!

namecheap primarily operates as a reseller for enom. You'd be subject to 3 layers of policy (registry, registrar, reseller) + ICANN regulation + the laws in the various jurisdictions. Find something cleaner if you are worried about your domains. Complexity can lead to all sorts of finger pointing when something goes wrong. And if that doesn't phase you, be sure you are comfortable with the enom TOS as you'd likely be subject to that as well. (and yes, I"m aware that NC has an accreditation, that said, most of their registrations are held under and managed through enom's accreditation.)

Jotform was a victim of lax registrar policy and wasn't a seizure by the USG or any of its agencies in any sense.

Using the Internet is a risk. So is crossing the street.

Your single biggest risk in registering a domain name relates to the business practices of the registrar you choose. This has nothing to do with the "nationality" of a TLD.

You also face risks associated with the policy of the TLD you register in, the laws of the local government and the jurisdictions of the registrar, registry and DNS provider you register with.

You also face a myriad of risks associated with the UDRP and various intellectual property law.

You can either worry yourself silly with the boundary cases and outside risks that I see most talked about in recent HN articles or you can cover 99% of your issues by finding yourself a good registrar (one with fair and reasonable policies and practices) operating under a good government (one with fair and reasonable laws and law enforcement practices) and register in a reliable TLD. And then spend the other 23.5 hours in your busy day worrying about running your startup or doing something else useful with your time.