Several weeks ago, in one of my first articles on Notes from a Small Island I noted that there was systemic risk in using domain names registered in foreign countries such as Libya.

And by ‘foreign’, I don’t mean overseas, I mean ‘different – culturally, linguistically, and jurisdictionally’.

Libya scores pretty high in all those categories, and in view of the recent problems experienced by LETTER.LY I am not above a passing ‘I told y’all so’.

In summary, because of communication difficulties caused by the Libyan civil war, it appears that  this particular .LY domain registration couldn’t be renewed and went off the air temporarily.

Now both .GG and .JE (the Channel Islands) have their own a small share of’ domain hack’ registrations.

GG has several different flattering meaning in Chinese internet slang. It also means ‘good game’ to computer gamers and Internet chess and poker players. There’s even a Tennessee religious group. JE means ‘I’ in French, and both ‘you’ and ‘little’ in Dutch.

The registry welcome overseas registrants — there are no artificial restrictions on registration at all, although it’s important to note that we are not advertising or promoting the domains as anything at all other than the local official two letter codes for the Channel Islands. It is clear in the Agreement, that the contract of registration is under our laws, and our courts have jurisdiction.

 

Fortunately, we have had a stable system of government and an independent judiciary for many hundreds of years – as a common-law jurisdiction under the English Crown. This gives registrants, in the same way as international banks and others in the finance industry who open branches of their businesses locally, a large amount of comfort that our system is logical and predictable and operates under the Rule of Law.

But if a third party raises a dispute over a GG or JE name, you will either have to resolve it in our equivalent of the UDRP, or hire a local Advocate to represent you in court.

And that might be an inconvenience, to say the least, depending on where you are from.