Traditionally, the industry has only associated an ICANN Accreditation with companies involved in the business of selling domain names. This is probably why most Domainers don’t have much information on getting/maintaining a Registrar and effectively there are a Lot of misconceptions about the same.

The fact is that the average cost of maintaining an ICANN Accreditation comes to only US$ 6,000 and you get a pretty much unbeatable level of portfolio security and control.

The internet is the new frontier. This exact thing happened during the original frontier. Physical land disputes, virtual land disputes. Same thing.

That said, I hope this Kentucky bologna heightens in the mainstream and gets destroyed.

It’s also worth noting that as a U.S. citizen one does have certain rights, here in the U.S., and a whole host of options that may not be found when one is doing business as a foreign national.

There’s all sorts of tradeoffs involved in these decisions. One should make a point of speaking with competent counsel in both the offshore nation and the “local nation” before making such choices. Problems can arise elsewhere, too, not just in the U.S., that involve litigation and courts and trademark claims and tax claims and . .

Relax take a chill pill ,fear is only scary when you believe it. Yes the financial markets are in turmoil, I know I was the former Marketing Analyst for the Rockefeller Foundation, along with being a stock broker it seems like forever.

Yes we need The ICA , but just relax and whatever you do stay put for now, with all the transfers going on things could get lost EASY. The storm clouds will eventually pass. We ,as in all of us, are in this thing together. There is safety in numbers. Stay tuned , but please don’t flip out, because its all small stuff.

China looks good to me now.

I think that a lot of people looking that this Kentucky issue think it is just about some good ole boys and their gambling domains.

Unfortunately, this month it is a challenge to gambling domains, next month it is geodomain city.com domains and then next year it is Rick’s domain portfolio!!

The goal in writing this post is to get people to think about the long term effects of this Kentucky action. It’s not over and there are many more – larger – challenges to come.

What happens when (go ahead and pick a company and domain name here) IBM decides that they should own PC.COM because they invented the thing and sell them too so they go off and get a US court order granted to them on weak argument. Then they present the court order to ‘CSC Corporate Domains’ who is the US based registrar on record for PC.COM and the domain is handed over to IBM without a hearing or any chance for the owner of PC.COM to defend themselves.

The owner of the domain is effectively out of business while they fight to get their domain back.

*THAT* is the issue with the Kentucky situation that is scaring the pants of many domain owners out there.

- Richard

This also points out something Rick Shwartz has said. They will be coming after our cyber assets fast and hard! We need to band together to protect our cyber assets . Anyone second that ?

re:”Does Visa stop foreign banks from processing internet gambling transactions by non-US companies, done outside the USA? Nope.”

Your are correct .. the key fact in that statement being that the transactions come from OUTSIDE the US.
I specialize in setting high-risk merchant accounts so I’m pretty well versed in this area. Both V and MC will allow transactions from anywhere else in the world but NOT from the US – even if the gambling company is a non-US corp, hosted offshore etc etc. No bank (domestic or foreign) can allow US transactions in a normal gambling coded account.