Are Americans Buying Up Some of The Most Valuable .EU Domain Names?

The new .EU domain is easily the hottest new top level domain (TLD) to come around in years, and for obvious reasons. Every domain name investor would love to get a piece of dot-EU, but the namespace has its restrictions:

• You must have a registered office, central administration or principal place of business within the European Community, or
  
  
• You must be an established organization within the European Community, or
  
  
• You must reside within the European Community.
  

So what does an American domain name investor have to do to get into the .EU domain game? Not much: simply have a small but established office within a country that is part of the EU group of nations. In theory, one could rent a tiny 10' x10' office in an EU country, preferably in an EU nation that's still developing and has plenty of cheap office space available. Having a relative in an EU country would make the "established presence" rule even easier to get around.

And it looks like at least one domain investor has done just that, and some 'Net savvy Europeans aren't too pleased about it. Click here to view the debate.

So, should an American with a legal setup in an EU nation be allowed to grab ultra-premium domain names? Like:

fashion.eu
euro.eu
porn.eu
mortgage.eu
golf.eu
casino.eu
poker.eu
holiday.eu
car.eu

After all, non-Americans only need to have an office in the United States to legally register a .US domain name (the dot-US namespace has restriction that are similar to those of dot-EU)

Feel free to post your comments!

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