61–70 of 79 posts
If you want a bulletproof registrar that doesn't bow under pressure and with competitive pricing go for http://internet.bs/ (yes they have their offices in the bahamas). Also free whois protection is included AFAIK
Unfortunately .bs reads as .bullshit to me.
UAE and Palestine? Seriously? UAE has a questionable track record insofar as journalistic freedom is concerned. It ranks #112, below Liberia and South Sudan, in RSF's Press Freedom Index. What if one of the Emirs is offended by what I post on the site? Palestine ranks #153, not to mention you'd have to take Israel into consideration when you do anything Palestine-related. Gandi.net is an excellent registrar, but I'm…
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? Not to mention the fact that the entire OP is based on the way things are TODAY and that assumes it's even accurate. Which of course it's not (just taking you…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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? Not to mention the fact that the entire OP is based on the way things are TODAY and that assumes it's even accurate. Which of course it's not (just taking you…
> 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 jus…
Speaking of gandi, a while ago, I ran into some problems logging in to their site, and I—finally—got this response from them by e-mail: Hello again pessimism, Our password field supports only passwords up to 16 characters at this time. All longer passwords are truncated. If you have any further questions, please let me know. Sincerely, [redacted] Tier 1 Tech Support Gandi US I checked in with @theharmonyguy who says…
I take issue with the author's criticism of .is. They've recently told most of the world to go fuck themselves, and one of their members of parliament is a Wikileaks spokesperson. I'm thinking they're pretty pro-freedom.
You also get to run your servers off volcanic activity, which is pretty cool and ideal for any aspiring Blofeld, although it does sound potentially risky.
I take issue with the author's criticism of .is. They've recently told most of the world to go fuck themselves, and one of their members of parliament is a Wikileaks spokesperson. I'm thinking they're pretty pro-freedom.
It's not the cheapest option but it's not too pricey either.
I've got a .co on namecheap now. No controversial plans but curious as to how safe it is.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You also get to run your servers off volcanic activity, which is pretty cool and ideal for any aspiring Blofeld, although it does sound potentially risky.
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.
Also that boiler you want to stick in, will need to be made of some exceptional heat resistant material. And probably be replaced very frequently. Not very easy and very expensive. :)
But Iceland do have a lot of geothermal steam based generators.
I take issue with the author's criticism of .is. They've recently told most of the world to go fuck themselves, and one of their members of parliament is a Wikileaks spokesperson. I'm thinking they're pretty pro-freedom.
I believe he meant that despite their intentions their size and precarious economic state leaves them open to pressure relative to countries of similar cultural values.
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.