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Swedish Regulators Ban Word "Bank" In Domain Names For Non-Banks
It seems that Swedish regulators have decided to extend the requirement of not calling yourself a bank to the registration of domain names. Now anyone that tries to register a .SE domain name with the word "bank" in it will need to prove they are a legitimate bank. Hopefully there are no blood banks or anyone with the last name of "Banks" that might want a .SE domain. Here is a Google translation of the demand issued by the authorities to the .SE registry.
Let sweden register "bank.se" and offer subdomains only to valid banks.
It works here in the UK - schools get .sch.uk, the police get .police.uk, etc., while we normal people get .plc.uk, .me.uk, .co.uk and so on.
Does my bum look big in this?
So that explains why I couldn't reach www.BjörnsSpankBank.se and I'll have you know that I expect a full refund for the *cough* services that "Björn" failed to render. Thankfully www.BjörnsPörn.se is still up or I'd have to switch to Swiss or *shudder* German sites.
My work here is dung.
Also, sorry to the three or four Swedes out there that were going to launch individual websites to show off their antique piggy bank collections over the next decade.
That ought to do it! Thanks very much, Ray.
After calming me down with some orange slices and some fetal spooning, E.T. revealed to me his singular purpose.
Of common sense. There should be some things allowed within reason though. I can think of a few things that have "bank" in them that would not ever be misinterpreted as being a bank.
Sperm banks? West Banks? Bankruptcy Help Club for Men? Anne Bankroft? (Yeah, I know...)
I guess sperm banks will have to go by the next-most synonymous name: britneyspears.se
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As long as they meet the reserve requirements.
Sounds like their registration system is borked.
Because banks and bankers are pillars of society...
Deleted
seeks bankroll for sperm-bank expansion onto embankment.
What do they call Foodbanks in Sweden? And will they still get websites?
Never underestimate the potential of Human stupidity. -Heinlein
It's a good thing you don't attach that to everything... oh, wait...
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
The ban on the characters "B A N K S" in that order is obviously a thinly-veiled attack on Wolfram Alpha, particularly on Stephen Wolfram.
.SE domain have a vendetta against Stephen Wolfram, the soul behind NKS... the Ba-NKS.
As well all know, Stephen Wolfram is the man behind Wolfram Alpha, and also the man behind the "New Kind of Science" -- NKS.
Also, as we all know, the ancient Egyptian word for soul is "Ba".
Therefore, we can conclude that the controllers of the
So who cares about the edge cases of blood banks or food banks or river banks or the purveyors of fine piggy banks. The real concern here is that there is a government conspiracy against a potential rival of Google... how deeply does Google have its claws sunk into European governments? When can be expect them to ban "Bing" from the url of any site that is not owned by either a registered wholesaler of a certain kind of cherry or a seller of outdated Christmas music?
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
won't be making it to Sweden then :P
Monstar L
...the organization to ban Kabalism is out of luck.
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
Who cares about the Swedes anyway. Norway is much better.
And I was just about to register my domain for a Swedish fansite about the world's greatest dancer.
A friend of mine is named Robert A. Bank or "rob a bank". It's true. Good thing he isn't Swedish.
Umlauts make everything funnier.
There are over 2000 domains with "bank" as part of their name in the .se-domain - most of them are not banks in the traditional we-take-care-of-your-money banks. One example is platsbanken.se which is the national goverment register of open jobb.
And strangely enough some of the real big banks don't use bank in their domain name.
I know from several involded in the NIC .SE they dont like this at all and intend to fight it. Actually this is something that has been pushed by the banks for several years but became more prominent because of well-published fishing-scams against the banks - which actually managed to steal some money. The 'fun' part is that the fishing attempts didn't use .se domain names but domain names in other TLDs.
Tracing who created an .SE domain is easier then for other TLD so we probably will never see anyone trying to use the .SE TLD for fishing scams against the banks. So PTS - the national post and telphone goverment overseer - are pushing an agenda that won't really had help against the fishing attempts.
So this is nothing that are decided - yet. It will be a battle between PTS and NIC .SE over who decide over domain names.
Just saying it like it are.
why don't they just spend the money their wasting making this law on end user education which is the real problem anyways. the more you sugar code it, the worse it is when you get out in the real world.
..just because you can, doens't mean you should...
There is also the possibility that a domain name might have a combination of letters that could spell "bank". Something like turbankiosk.se.
Proverbs 21:19
my doughnut activism site (bankrispiekremes.se), my Cretaceous-themed bar's site (clubankylosaurus.se), and my large brass instrument tribute to 90's crap pop site (tubankotb.se). Sigh.
/...
The press release (Swedish) from PTS (the regulating body referred to) makes it clear that the word is banned unless for banks or if it is otherwise clear that the name in question can not lead to misunderstandings.
A little more information than what you can get from the summary, TFA or the contentless blog rant TFA links to.
May we live long and die out
briannabanks.se ?
So what if I have a domain name promoting bankruptcy related legal services, or a travel website for Fairbanks Alaska, or snowbanking, etc. There's probably a huge list of things I haven't already thought of, but... it seems to not really address the problem with financial service website forgery. I doubt some identity thief will go "Well snap!, lets wrap it up boys, Sweden finally put an end to our tomfoolery!, the game is up!"
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
I've entrusted all my money with the good folks at citibenk.se, so I'm completely safe!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
so...no sperm banks either?
Or if your name is "banks"?
Or if you happen to be a particular brand of beer.
This seems ridiculous. My banks have the domain names "halifax-online.co.uk" and "egg.com"...
c'on that can't fool anyone into thinking it's a bank's website.
bobeubanks.se for Bob Eubanks
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Ha - Very amusing. I can't get enough of the very horrible bank puns everyone is making!
Seriously though, I am amused and enjoying a Friday afternoon chuckle!
Thanks!
Shameless plug alert: Game server control panel
Well, that's one less spammer-owned domain!
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Why is everyone assuming that they use the translation of the word bank in the same context as we do in English (such as in reference to a blood or sperm repository)? The Sweedish language isn't romantic based and doesn't share the same base or grammar. As a result, even with the influence of English on their society, I'm not any where near confident as a non-Swedish speaker that the language would even use the translation of "Bank" in the same manner we do in English. Native speakers could likely comment on the usage of the word in the language but it's downright silly for speakers of another language without exposure to Scandinavian languages to believe the use of words would be similar to English.
A government entity wants to control who ca use a word. How is that not censorship?
You say that yur example is not rellevant, then use it anyways. WHat is that, the "Point out my strawman and still use it fallacy"?
SO you ahve this flaming post, then call the poeple who recognize it as flamebait ignorant? Do you know what ignorant means?
Where the hell are you taking a computer exam?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."
The spammers and the cybersquaters and those taking advantage of misspelled search parameters will simply get a little more creative to end-run the Swedes.
Back in the day AOL banned Scunthorpe, Australia as a four letter word. Try and find the naughty bit :)
It's a good thing that Iain Banks has already registered his own domain name, but what about the rest of us with that name? This is bullocks.
So no .se website for my favorite author then, I guess.
I wanted to make a Swedish fan site about the Jordell Bank observatory....
Thanks Sweden!
Durn do durn de bork bork bork!
Tsukasa: All I really want, is to be left alone...
... no more Tyra Banks.
Have gnu, will travel.
They haven't banned the word bank. They've merely asked the registrar to highlight requests containing the word "bank" so that they can be checked for adherence to an existing law regarding portraying a company as a banking institution if it is not. Not how we would manage the system in the U.S. -- where consumer protection laws are more reactive than proactive compared to many European countries (not a judgment, just a fact) -- but hardly anything to get up in arms about.
And not even close to what the original post claims they are doing.
Guess at least in Sweeden crabs don't have ankles?
Aside from this even being fair or not, I wonder how effective this will be anyways? Off the top of my head, the only bank I can think of that has it in their URL is:
www.bankofamerica.com
However, there's also:
www.wachovia.com
www.wellsfargo.com
www.citifinancial.com
www.firstfederal.com
www.htfcu.org
and so on and so on. I'm sure that's just the tiniest subset of banks, and my reference point is from the US, but at least here, it doesn't seem all the common for banks to put the word "bank" in their URL anyways.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
My domain is jobbank.com. Well we handle, ummm.... job posts and resumes and... Can anybody tell me if we look like a Financial Bank? Maybe not? Glad my company started up in USA all of a sudden.
JohnE
jobbank.com - Search jobs, post resume,
... and wonder why so many people resist surrendering top-level Internet domain control to an international organization.
When setting up a company in the UK your name is also restricted, though notably they do not include "bank" as sensitive, I assume in recognition of the variety of uses. The principle is a good one - people often assume an element of legitimacy to a limited company and assume they are somehow "approved". A limited company effectively makes a bargain with society: its investors enjoy limited liability but in return must conform to certain rules and make certain information public. Does any such bargain exist for domains?
Translated to English (Google Translate removed a negation, as it always does with every damn negation when it translate from Swedish; Google Translate is really dangerous, some day someone will start a war because of it):
There have been a lot of fake bank sites in Sweden during a couple of years, with names similar to existing banks. If you read the full document (in Swedish, not googledygook) it is pretty clear that they only want to have the word bank included in the list of words in domain names that need to be verified by a human before approval.
So there are no sperm banks in Sweden? Or do people think go there expecting to deposit money?
Will no one think of the livestock?!
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
http://www.josbank.com/ Joseph A Bank.
The US has similar laws... It is absolutely necessary to protect the naive public lambs.
Unless this denial is automatic and without recourse, having no allowance for human review or appeal, then the only problem I see here is yet another Slashdot article exaggerating the facts for the sake of copy.
Except all of your examples are not in Swedish. That's a pretty basic mistake on your part.
The grammar of Scandinavian languages dictates that the definite article (the), not a separate word like in most other languages, must be attached to the end of the noun. It would be Doggerbanken etc.
To a Swede it would indicate what the word was trying to communicate, bank or source of information. This is a cultural context issue you won't understand unless you're from the country.
Bankright.se would clearly not be a bank from Sweden, no Swedish bank would use an English name in their home market. Also because of the rules of word order in Swedish it would naturally come after the name; Handelsbanken, [the] trade bank.
... to know that the U.S. gov isn't alone and that Sweden is also a member in good standing in the International Group of Idiotic Governments, (IGIG).
Goat.se
The real aim of this move is obviously to suppress the "Ban Kleenex!" movement.
Property is theft.
What if i want to host a p0rn site called "Bankmehard" ? wow, burning some Karma there.
Somebody in sweden please register superB-ANKh.se
Superb meaning great and the Ankh being the "Key of Life".
I used the Google translator to translate "bank" to Swedish. It returned this list of nouns:
1. STRAND 2. VALL 3. DRIVA 4. MOLNBANK 5. BANKNING 6. BRINK 7. BANK 8. SPARBÃ-SSA 9. GRUND 10. DOSERING
Probably not all of these refer to a financial institution, but if the Swedish government is trying to protect the Swedish people, they probably need to address something other than just "bank". So, they probably have another agenda.
-Todd
Omne ignotum pro magnifico.
what a stupid idea .... there is only one bank i know of that actually has bank in its website name .... and i can think of several businesses that have it in their company name the most notable would be Banks Electrical