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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.
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.
seeks bankroll for sperm-bank expansion onto embankment.
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.
A friend of mine is named Robert A. Bank or "rob a bank". It's true. Good thing he isn't Swedish.
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.
See, the policy is already paying off.
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.
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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
English is not a romance language either. Both English and Swedish are Germanic languages, and Swedish does use 'bank' in the manner suggested (blodbank = blood bank, pantbank = pawn shop, platsbank = jobs available etc). It's not a bad point that different languages don't necessarily correspond in usage though.
"Give me six lines of C++ code written by the most competent programmer, and I will find enough in there to hang him."
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?
They will simply become Swedish Sperm Savings and Loans.
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.
Confirmed, in the original, untranslated PDF. They even point out (like a score of /.ers did) that the word "bank" has several meanings.