Post by @aral@mastodon.ar.al

@aral Can maybe also consider .meow when the time comes!

https://dotmeow.org (yes that's .org...)

@aral Moved my own personal domain to .nl and my business domain to .eu recently, though a Dutch registrar. Slowly moving away from US-based stuff 👍

@brunoscheele @aral

It seems that you went with 'Mijn.host' - which is one of the few independent Dutch hosters. 99% of the Dutch webhosting market is owned by a couple of investor groups.

Once they acquire a hosting firm, it is quickly hollowed out. Prices are multiplied (sometimes even 5x!), customer support becomes nonexistent etc.

This page has an overview of the Dutch webhosting market. The worst one - by far - is TWS / YourOnline.

@h3artbl33d @aral Dodged a bullet there then 😅

Thanks for the website, that’ll be a good one to refer folks to.

@h3artbl33d @aral Ah, and Argeweb is on the TWS group as well. That explains the price hike I noticed on my partner’s domain, good thing we gave that one up.

@brunoscheele @aral

Yeah, I think that TWS hosters now casually sell .nl domains for 25+ euro per year. Which is utter madness.

@brunoscheele
I will point out that if your government does something catastrophically stupid like leaving the EU, that will get taken away from you.

Yes, I'm still bitter.

@aral

@aral Thank you! I have some work cut out for me this weekend, getting some new domains. Avoiding US payment systems is still basically impossible though... :/

@aral @EUCommission almost all my domains are .fr now. They are far cheaper that .com etc...

@aral @EUCommission Thanks for this aral.

@aral One year ago I switched from .org to .eu and from WordPress to Bludit specifically to avoid this kind of situation. You can't trust the USA anymore. 😑

@aral Thanks for bringing this up, reminded me¹ to start moving my stuff to a .nl domain. (Moving everything is going to take forever though, soooo many places where I’m @tubul.net 😞)

¹. Well, your toot, and I finally came up with a domain name I’m happy with.

@davidculley @aral if I'm not mistaken, most of the EU registrar policies are harmonised to allow EU residents to register (I can register a .it, .pt, .es, etc) so you don't need to switch when you leave.

The reason why you can't take the time with you though is basically capitalism but also separate entities, you pay to rent the specific name, etc etc

@davidculley I just saw the update, yeah denic is nonsensical if that's their policy

@davidculley @aral You pay to reserve a specific domain not generally a domain in that TLD space. If you decide to not use that domain anymore, that is your decision. If you reserve 10 seats in a cinema for a specific movie, you don’t get to come with 3 people and then after the fact demand to have 7 seats in other movies.

(That we rent domains instead of buying them is something that is worrysome in any case.)

@yatil I disagree.

If I pay to get the key and thus access to a certain house, and then never visit that house while having the key, then that is on me.

If I pay to get the key, and then return the key and thus cannot even access the house anymore, then I shouldn't have to pay for access to the house (which I don't have anymore).

Besides, all registrars other than those handling the .de and .nl are doing it in the second way. Therefore it's a business decision and not a technical limitation to do it in the first way.

@aral @EUCommission I noticed .ch and .li missing while Iceland is listed. Are they using U.S.-registrars?

@aral ccTLDs are definitely more resilient to pressure from ICANN than gTLDs and sponsored TLDs.

They might have their own issues, obviously. As always, it depends on your threat model.

@EUCommission

@rysiek @aral @EUCommission what kind of pressure

@aral .eco is a gTLD that is run by a Canadian company and the registry is operated from CIRA's registry solution : https://www.cira.ca/en/registry/cira-registry-platform/

There are a handful of others that operate on CIRA's platform too.

The more stable choice in general would be a ccTLD depending on your country and local laws or Iceland since their publishing laws are very solid

@kc @aral
One of the others is .ie.

When it moved to the CIRA platform, the IEDR (which had already changed back-end platform at least once before) kept its unique custom API for .ie registrar automation, instead of moving to a more widely supported open API.

As .ie is limited to registrants who can prove their connection to Ireland, many of the international registrars don't offer .ie as an option. It requires their systems to track changes to IEDR's API, and that adds extra work or cost.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al
What do you recommend, if one owns a .info-domain?

It's with my family name, however if one knows that and does a web search with it, my fediverse name can also be found.

@fasnix .info is owned by Identity Digital, Inc.

Wikipedia has the tea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identity_Digital

I’d say at least get another domain as a backup and have a contingency plan.

@aral@mastodon.ar.al
Thanks!
I own several .eu-domains, however, my < name >.info is my main domain, which I use solely for official mail communication.

Would you advice in turning it to one .eu-domain instead?

@aral @fasnix Yeah, I had fun with my domains but I think I better get a .ch soon as a backup.

@aral @EUCommission PunktumDK requires buying through a reseller now (recent policy change) and I dont know any resellers who dont also sell ICANN TLD-based domains

Right, except that .eu seems to have changed to contract-based.

A full list of ccTLDs with registry contract can be found here:

www.icann.org/resources/pages/cctlds/cctlds-en

@aral @EUCommission

@hallunke23 @EUCommission Oh, yay!