Paper advises domain name registrants to be cautious when choosing TLDs

In a paper titled ‘Which Internet registries offer the best protection for domain owners’, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Public Knowledge outline several recommendations for domain name registrants to take into account when choosing a top-level domain (TLD). The paper recommends, among others, that registrants avoid new generic TLDs (gTLDs), ‘for better protection against trademark bullies’, and that they look for registries that do not have ‘a streamlined policy to takedown domain names alleged to be associated with copyright infringement’. When it comes to privacy, registrants are advised to register domain names ‘in a country code top-level domain (ccTLD) that does not provide public access to domain registrant data, or registering a domain through a registrar that provides free privacy proxy services’. The paper also includes an analysis of the policies of several gTLD registries, including Afilias, Donuts, Google, Verisign, as well as ccTLD registries such as .au (Australia), .br (Brazil), and .eu (European Union).