As I am from India and I am not familiar with the Fed. rules in US, I do like to have a clarification... will there be any problems if I add the state names or cities names in a domain name if it is not already taken... like.. www.AlabamaCity.com...assuming it is not taken...will I have any problems from the US gov... thanx for your help..
No restrictions on .com (or .net / .org) names. As long as you're not infringing on someone's trademark (e.g. mypepsi.com), you can register anything you want. State and federal organizations use .gov (or more recently - .us) to separate themselves from the rest. For the kicks, check out whitehouse.com and whitehouse.org Hope this helps.
eduorg.. thanx..this was the answer i was wanting to hear...cos i have found some nice doman names with the state names...just wanted to confirm anyway... thanx again..
EduOrg is right. You're free to register city names. No one can trademark city or country names. The New Zealand govt had to pay NZ$1 million just to buy back the rights to newzealand.com. And the South African govt offered US$10 million for southafrica.com.
if you what you said is right....wouldnt ICANN's rule regarding Fair usage policy come into effect...i was not aware abtthe above transactions..just thinking over...wont the govt. have more advantage in takeing over the domain name than the person who regged it ??? jsut my thoughts... thanx for your feedback..
Definition of "Fair usage" varies across the TLDs (and even more so across ccTLDs). The .com is the least restrictive. FU is especially hard to enforce for non-branded terms. Again, look at whitehouse.com and whitehouse.org - they have been happily operating these site for ~ 10 years, along with the real whitehouse.gov. For some ccTLDs, limited FU is build into the registration rules. For example, .eu, .li (liechtenstein), .lu (luxembourg) and many others reserve city, state/region, country names for government organizations. A private citizen cannot register them. In the case of New Zealand and South Africa, they have their own ccTLDs: .nz and .za, which they can control. But they also wanted to get .com extension because it's much more recognized, and therefore had to pay $$.
I don't agree with the reservation of names in any case If there are "reserved words" as many ccTLDs call them or country names or whatever, the responsible authorities must register them and pay their fees. Maybe redirect them to a gov. site This way the ccTLD loose money I don't believe the registry can act as high court to decide which one will get the domain Everyone should be able to get any domain he wants. Restrictions are usually the reasons to downgrade the ccTLD .com is not only known because it's brandable and the biggest TLD in the world but because there are naive people in key positions of the ccTLD operation and acting as masters of the ccTLD push people to .com I believe that certain ccTLD operators act within the "protection" of their appointed organizations and illegally decide who's gonna get domains and who's not The situation is out of hands and i'm not speaking here specially for the country names but for simple names that they baptize as "reserved words" and deny their use (example : web, email, domain....)
Domnom - be fair. That's the nature and purpose of ccTLD - let the countries decide how and who can register them. They should be able to regulate their own domain extensions, not you or me. Think of this as citizenship (or visa). Each country has different rules. Furthermore, I'm all for moderate regulation - it protects the rights of local citizens and consumers, and to some degree keeps domain squatters at bay. "masters of the ccTLD push people to .com" ...nobody pushes customers to .com (in fact, the reverse is true because ccTLDs are more expensive). In many situations, .com is better because it lacks restrictions; in other cases, restrictions help your business differentiate itself (see my previous example about .edu).
EduOrg "fair" is an abused word So before you judge about the characterization of ccTLDs and the way they operate and use their power, let's first both agree that they're many Some maybe follow a fair policy but certainly not all Research it a bit and you will find MANY horror stories I don't know if ICANN can resolve these issues or if they can accept complains for the same reasons
Domnom, I understand your point, but in my opinion each country should be free to regulate its TLD. If I may digress a bit - this is precisely the reason our country gets into so much diplomatic trouble: we're trying to impose our view of the world on others. Let's follow the Monroe Doctrine instead - unless it concerns us, don't intervene. To put it simply, I'm only concerned about main TLDs (.com, .net, .org, .info, .edu), everything else is under the local jurisdiction, and I accept their restrictions as is. As for the horror stories - the best probably being the .uk.co extension (NOT the standard .co.uk) - that's part of the game. High risk, high reward. No different than drilling for oil; you may end up being another Rockefeller, or your company will be taken away by the government like it happened in Bolivia and Russia. Lastly, many individual horror stories occur not due to regulations, but rather lack thereof. One of the major concerns right now is a possible shift of complete TLD jurisdiction from the US Department of Commerce to ICANN. The big unknown is whether ICANN can handle this task, or will end up with the Eurid-like mess.
Wow...you guys are talking a lot of high end stuff which i am not aware of... it would be helpful for me..if any of you guys post some links here which you have been referencing..so that i can learn more.. and thanx once again for your inputs...