Re: international registration

At 15:00 -0400 29/08/01, Cook, Shelby wrote:
>We've been thinking about registering our name in other countries 
>besides the US and are looking at a .ch extension.  I've visited the 
>nic.ch site and everything looks fine but I was asked whether we can 
>host this on a US server and I had no answer.

If the Swiss, who are not exactly economic nationalists on most 
issues, had a provision obliging anyone with a ".ch" extension to 
host their Internet services on Swiss servers, I think it would have 
caused something of a rumpus.

In other words, although I have no direct experience of Switzerland 
(I live next door, in France), I'd be very surprised if you needed to 
worry.

In most countries there is no obligatory relationship between 
registering a name and where you then host the corresponding services.

You may have to register through a Swiss-approved registrar, just as 
anyone registering a ".fr" extension has to go through a 
French-approved one.

There may also be requirements regarding some kind of connection 
between the registering person or entity and the registering country.

In France, for example, which I suspect may be more strict than 
Switzerland, I don't think you'd be able to register a ".fr" name if 
you didn't either live in the country, or run a company or other body 
based in it.

(This seems to me to be perfectly reasonable; I think that when you 
visit a site with a national domain name extension, it should mean 
that you're visiting a site attached to the country in question).

Once registered, however, there's usually no restriction on where you 
can actually host the service.

Best way to confirm all this: send an e-mail to nic.ch, or to one of 
their registering companies.

Hope this helps,
-- 
David Sharp, journaliste, France <mailto:david.sharp(at)sharp-words.com>
Site personnel / Personal home page http://www.sharp-words.com/
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