Tiny ccTLDs - Who Should You Register With?

mumkin asks: "I have been shopping for a new domain and am considering going with a more obscure ccTLD for my namespace needs. I like the thought of my lan being a virtual extension of a tropical isle or wind-swept steppe, and generally looking weird in people's logs :) Ideally the NIC would lack a full-on whois server, for that extra degree of anonymity. It is important to me that the registry be doing something worthwhile for the country whose TLD it's hawking, and not just ripping them off. Oh, and I want nothing to do with VeriSign, so .TV and .CC are right out (sorry, Tuvalu! sorry, Cocos Islands). So, the question is: what tiny ccTLD registrars allow non-resident registration, are trustworthy, inexpensive, preferably privacy-conscious, and give something truly meaningful back to the countries whose domains they sell? Here's what I have so far -- who else should I be looking at, or what have I got wrong?" Read on for mumkin's ccTLD listing.

.AS : American Samoa. American Territory. Pop ~68,000. The registry is based in New York City and makes no mention its relationship to American Samoa, or what if any benefits accrue to the people of AS in exchange for the sale of their TLD space. Cost: $45/year. Whois: limited.

.CX : Christmas Island. Home of the dreaded goatse. Part of the Indian Ocean Territories of Australia, pop ~ 3,000. Recently shafted by the bankruptcy of Planet Three, nic.cx is now (according to its website) "a community owned Christmas Island non profit company." $9.60 of every reg. fee goes to the "Christmas Island Information Economy Development Trust," underwriting the cost of internet service on the island. Service which is currently really limited (2 hours/day of dial-up for $25/mo). Cost: $37.40/year. Whois: yes

.HM : The Heard and McDonald Islands. Australian External Territory, Pop: 0. An antarctic island group, mostly covered in glaciers, generally off-limits to visitors. A UN world heritage site. The nic is managed by an Australian guy, and the reg fee pays for the costs of running the registry. All [surname].hm addresses are unavailable, as those have been sold to the mysterious www.my.hm email service. Probably the most morally neutral ccTLD to grab a domain in, since there are no residents to disenfranchise. Cost: $35/year. Whois: none

.PN : Pitcairn Island. British Overseas Territory. Home of 44 descendants of the Bounty mutineers (half of whom are currently under investigation for more recent unsavory acts). Supposedly the sale of domains will help to bring internet access to the island, (they currently have limited, $3.50/min satellite connection, courtesy of a seismic monitoring station on the island. Cost for a domain: auction. Whois: broken

.PS : Palestinian Territories. With only 50 domains registered, the .ps namespace is wide open. It's the only NIC I can think of that's likely to be bombed/raided/otherwise reduced by a military force, since it's located in beautiful Ramallah. Given the US Govt's current mindset, owning a .ps domain could also make you a Person of Interest to any number of three-letter agencies. Cost: $45/year. Whois: limited

.SH : St. Helena Island and .AC : Ascension Island. British Overseas Territories with a population of ~6,000 and ~1,000 respectively. Jamestown, St Helena is the capitol from which the islands of St Helena, Ascension, and Tristan da Cunha are governed. The NIC is run out of London and provides free name service and registration for anyone with residency. Ascension is an an incredibly well-networked island for its size. Cost: $100 first year, $50/year thereafter. Whois: yes

.TJ : Tajikistan. Central Asian nation, pop ~6,250,000. NIC is run by two guys in Fresno who also run one of the two Public Registrars for Tajikistan. No information about their relationship to Tajikistan, or what if any benefits the country may receive from their registry fees. Site last updated in '98. Cost: $25/year ($8/year within .com.tj, .web.tj, etc) Whois: yes

.TP : East Timor. Big news a while back, the media seems to have forgotten about them once the shooting stopped. Their TLD is managed by Connect-Ireland as a public service to the Timorese diaspora. There is little documentation on the site, and it's unclear where the $35/year registration fee goes. Xanana Gusmao, former resistance leader and current president, is the Administrative Contact! Note: on May 20th, the ISO 3166 list changed East Timor's alpha-2 designation to TL (Timor Leste). Presumably the IANA will soon change their TLD accordingly. Cost: $35/year. Whois: none"

Comments

Re:dot nu

[pne]

Getting a .nu domain name also pays for

free or low-cost Internet connectivity for the people of Niue, [...] for technology transfer and education in the Internet and computer use, and other related activities in Niue.

(From http://www.nunames.nu/about/about.cfm)

See also http://www.niue.nu/iusn/hist.htm (though the link is down for me at the moment), which gives a history of Internet User's Society Niue and of Internet connectivity in Niue.

Quote from there:

Now after a few years of on-line time with world wide email services we are finally on-line with full Internet services to Niue. Our systems continue to improve, and the services have been opened up to all permanent Niuean residents as a no cost service. The traffic has increased, the machines are state of the art, and the demand is following the generation of resources brilliantly.

Full services have been on-line since June 1999, and we look forward to whatever new developments in telecommunications, health and education that we can provide with the resources being generated by the .nu domain sales. So, if you happen to register a .nu domain, please remember that you are helping to keep Niue on-line in a way that would not be possible otherwise, and you are helping development at the grass roots level in other areas as well. Thank you for that!

-Richard Saint Clair, Alofi Niue-

No Whois means Less Spam, Less Stalkers

[Fiery]

If you register your domain with a registrar using a unique email address, and your registrar has no Whois availability, spammers are going to have one hell of a time spamming the email address you registered with.

It also keeps nasty mean people from the Internet (IRC, Usenet, etc..) from harassing you.

I could start an entirely new identity through one of those domains. If you chained emails through multiple registrars with limited or no whois availability, you at least have a chance of foiling the casual observer's attempt to trace you.

I'm not personally concerned if the agencies know about my secret email accounts or not -- I'd have to have a higher profile with them in order to be worried. :)

Re:Standards by which to judge ccTLDs

[mumkin]

Maybe he thinks people in other countries should just be able to register, for instance, .gov.us?

No, and I have no intention of registering in someone else's .gov.xx namespace either. That would be misleading (and probably quite difficult). Second level domains reserved for classes of institution, like .gov, .edu, .ac, etc. should, I think, be generally protected space. It's relatively easy for a nic to verify if the applicant is from a governmental department or educational institution -- there's a certain barrier to entry -- and a domain in that space is widely understood to be a valid credential. It would be unfortunate to lose that.

Now, as to whether non-US agencies should be able to hold domains in the .gov and .mil gTLDs ... that's a diffferent question. Ideally that would be the case, and perhaps 15 years ago it could have been worked out (probably by introducing ISO 3166-1 codes as restricted second levels, eg .us.gov). However, the early history of the internet seems to have set the precedent on this score, and I don't think there's any turning back.

The trickier ones to regulate are .com, .co, .net, .org, &c, and we've gone so far down the road of their being available to all that I think where you put yourself in those categories is just a question of self-identification. As to non-USians being allowed to register in .us namespace, sure, why not?

But don't abuse the TLD of other countries. It's just rude and misleading.

This is the crux of our diagreement. I don't advocate for the right to register in any ccTLD's namespace -- if they want to keep registration closed to non-domestics, that's fine, and perhaps commendable -- but if a county's NIC has decided to allow non-resident registrants, where's the harm in that? In theory (see above for Best Practices for ccTLDs) the role of the ccTLD manager is to facilitate the development of network access within their Local Community. If they have, presumably in consultation with local stakeholders, determined that the additional revenue / visibility / good will that such a policy might generate will help to further the cause of the local community, who am I to judge the propriety? My only criteria, as an informed consumer, is that the NIC execute its trusteeship in good faith, for the bettement of its community.

Ultimately, I submit that non-resident registrants are likely to feel a certain fondness for their host country -- assuming that the NIC is locally managed, or at least not entirely disassociated from its locality, (like .tv or .cc, or the incredibly sordid tale of .io). In the same way that pen-pals create a bond between disparate nationalities, I see the relationship between a non-resident registrant and the host nation as one which can serve to build international advocacy for local issues. And let's face it, many of these developing nations and territories, just finding their way onto the internet, can use all of the friends they can get.