Uncle Sam: If It Ends in .Com, It’s .Seizable
March 7th, 2012I’ve registered cryptogon.ch with the Swiss registrar Switchplus.
I don’t know how well .ch will hold up going forward, but it seemed prudent to at least have an alternative if I should lose control of the cryptogon.com domain for any reason. At a minimum, .ch appears to be far, far more desirable than the U.S. controlled top level domains, where arbitrary takedowns and DNS hijackings are now occurring.
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I don’t anticipate any particular action against Cryptogon, but the fact is that it has already happened to some site operators. No due process. Arbitrary, fascist whims. That’s it. And if it can happen to _______ (fill in the blank) it can happen to me or you, or anyone who uses .com, .net or .org.
—From 2010, cryptogon.ch
Via: Wired:
When U.S. authorities shuttered sports-wagering site Bodog.com last week, it raised eyebrows across the net because the domain name was registered with a Canadian company, ostensibly putting it beyond the reach of the U.S. government. Working around that, the feds went directly to VeriSign, a U.S.-based internet backbone company that has the contract to manage the coveted .com and other “generic” top-level domains.
EasyDNS, an internet infrastructure company, protested that the “ramifications of this are no less than chilling and every single organization branded or operating under .com, .net, .org, .biz etc. needs to ask themselves about their vulnerability to the whims of U.S. federal and state lawmakers.”
Research Credit: noncompliant
You should mirror your site on it. That way everyone can become familiar with using it now.
One question though. How much research did you put into it? Obviously having a national TLD is safer than .com. Are there advantages to having .ch over .ca, .ru, or lesser known ones such as .gw, .ax, .wf, or .so?
Damn, someone already has “said.so”. 🙂
Yeah, mirroring is somewhere on the to do list.
Re: why .ch? I’d encourage you to do your own research, but if you can think of a country that has a longer history of stability, neutrality and not stealing private property, I’d like to know about it.
It’s not obvious that having a national domain is safer than .com. .ru? HAHA. Maybe it’s comedy hour in comments right now.
How about Saudi Arabia or North Korea? lol
Ya, .ru was a joke. I was going to add .cn, but I wanted to be taken somewhat seriously. 🙂 Then again, how cooperative will Russia be if the US gov’t says “We want this domain taken down.” Of course, everyone will think all you do is send out viruses, spam, or questionable adult entertainment.
I’ll have to look into it more. I’m a bit miffed at my registrar right now, so I’m going to move my .com domains somewhere. I may as well put them with someone that will allow registration of the country I pick.
The Aland Island (.ax) looked good, except for pesky things like it’s only open to companies in the country, and it’s $250 for a 3 year registration. Reading about the countries history was interesting though.
There are only 248 national TLDs, so I may have to spend a while looking at registration requirements, costs, and their history of international policies. I was hoping you already did all the leg work. 🙂
It’s like I wrote above. Get back to me when you find a country that has a longer history of stability, neutrality and not stealing private property than Switzerland.
Also, if .ch turns out to not be alright, so what.
But as a starting point, I seriously doubt that there is a better option than .ch as a backup option as of now.