Protecting Your Domains – Going Offshore to Canada

In an increasingly hostile legal environment in the United States, your domains are at risk. Whether it’s the US Treasury Department blacklisting your domains because they are about Cuba or the governor of a backwards state trying to put his cronies’ competitors out of business, this legal risk is growing every day.

A lot of savvy domainers are proactively dealing with this by moving their domains offshore – to registrars located outside the United States. By using an offshore registrar, you are providing yourself with a layer of protection against these attacks on your domains.

There has been a lot of discussion in the domainersphere about what options are available, ranging from the Bahamas to Australia. However, I haven’t seen discussion about what I consider one of the best options – Canada – and its most domainer friendly registrar – Rebel.com.

There are a lot of advantages to keeping your domains in Canada. It’s a large, wealthy, politically stable country. It’s about as close to the United States as you can get. It’s an English speaking country. There is a solid British based legal system that avoids the excesses of the American legal system, as well as a solid, constitutionally entrenched bill of rights.

Rebel.com is a great registrar. I first started using them during the .asia landrush, and have been very happy with them. There was good support – it was prompt, responsive and friendly. Their interface is slick and intuitive, and seems to have been built with domainers in mind rather than your average domain customer. The pricing is reasonable, with prices going down the more domains you hold with them. Plus, Rebel.com is very domainer friendly, being involved in and supporting many of the domainer conferences, and participating in the domainer forums. They also seem to be one of the fastest growing registrars since the Kentucky court case started, so it looks like a lot of people are seeing things the same way that I do.

I asked Rebel.com what they do if they are served with an American court order, and they told me that they simply ignore it. They confirmed with me that they have no offices or staff in the United States.  They also stated that when they are served with a court order, they immediately notify their customer of all the issues involved, unlike a lot of the registrars in the Kentucky case.

The recent attacks on domains are just the beginning – it is going to get much worse in the years to come. There is not really an advantage to keeping your domains at a US registrar, and many risks to doing this. Moving your domains to an offshore registrar certainly isn’t going to provide you with bullet proof protection (and unfortunately, there is nothing that will). However, it is an additional step you can take to increase the security of your domains. Canada is one of the best options for that, and we have a well established, domainer friendly registrar at Rebel.com.

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