alternative tld's - any catches to watch out for?

.ca .nu in particular

[amznVibe]

Are there any legal "gotchas" to lookout for when buying or selling .nu or .ca tlds?

Also, what about sources for best prices for alternative tlds? We had a short discussion here recently for classic tld's but I've noticed alternatives can be pricey unless you shop around. Even taking advantage of currency conversion rates might be helpful?

[natim]

.ca requires canadian citizenship, .nu anyone can own

[amznVibe]

That's interesting about .ca - Enom offers it to me directly as a reseller without checks.
You sure its not like .co.uk and .org.uk where you can list as a foreign owner?

[natim]

You can look it up. Like the .us requires citizenship.

[canuck]

The "Canadian Presence" requirements are outlined at the following webpage (Section 2.1):

[cira.ca...]

- canuck

[amznVibe]

Yup, y'all are right, no .ca for me. But looks like others such as .uk are fine. Are there any others like that out there? I notice .at (Austria) is growing in popularity, does it require citizenship?

[c3oc3o]

No, .at is open:
[nic.at...]

[vrtlw]

You can look it up. Like the .us requires citizenship.

This statement is not quite true.

I, being a legal resident of the US would never, ever dream of becoming a citizen of the US. I am however legally entitled to register a domain name in th UStld namespace. Firstly as I am a legal permanent resident and secondly I operate a business within the US as stated in [nic.us...]

[edited by: heini at 11:08 am (utc) on Jan. 4, 2004]
[edit reason] see sticky mail [/edit]

[heini]

Basically all ccTLDs have their own registration rules, varying from ultra restrictive, like only available to companies from a specific country to free_for_alls.
CcTLDs are subject to regulations from local nics, those usually have info in the local language and english as well.
In theory there are generic TLDs, which are expressively not bound to locality/nationality, while country code TLDs are specifically designed to denote locality.

While in practice the distinctions have been muddled general perception is still very much influenced by that core concept. So the main thing apart from registration rules to keep in mind is to look at the perception of a ccTLD.
Does a ccTLD denote locality, and do you wish to assign that locality to your site? Simple example is a .de. It's a very well known ccTLD and signals very directly a german origin of the site. Do you want that?

Same with all other reputable ccTLDs. Those ccTLDs which do not signal locality are mostly small country TLDs which have been made free for all and consequently don't carry any level of trust.