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Comment by starwatch | Hacker News Reader

I've recently had a glimpse of that - buying my first .no domain required me to be registered on the Norwegian population register, and full digital verification. There was even a phone call with the registrar! Some of the other rules are bonkers too [1]:

- Each private individual may at any time subscribe to up to 5 domain names directly under .no

- Each organisation may at any time subscribe to up to 100 domain names directly under .no

[1]: https://www.norid.no/en/om-domenenavn/regelverk-for-no/

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There's a reason we in Sweden has a nickname for Norway; "the last soviet state"

Is it wrong for Norway to protect its domain? They don't want the ".no" domain to be the target of "domain hacks" from people who have nothing to do with Norway.

So if you want a ".no" domain, prove that you are Norwegian, the limits are to prevent the kind of abuse we see in most other TLDs (domain squatting, etc...). All that seem reasonable to me. Some countries put less restrictions on their own TLDs, especially tiny countries with interesting TLDs which they see as a revenue source, that's fine too, but to each his own.

If you don't like it, use any of the generic TLDs. AFAIK, Norway doesn't put any restriction on them.

You're right, the Norwegian government can do whatever they want. And yes, the ability to stop domain squatting is a nice side effect. For me though, it was a pretty surprising process, and set of restrictions.

Life is full of tradeoffs and this is no exception. I quite like the .no TLD - I find it lends itself to fun product / side project names. It's just a pity that I'm limited to 5 with the .no TLD :)

The problem is that this causes problems when people then move out of Norway, which is not a need you can predict when choosing a domain. So yes, always choose gTLDs but that doesn't absolve .no from criticism.

The restrictions on not owning too many domains are reasonable if still too lax IMO.

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