If someone opperates a website with a completely geographic domain name, such as one with a city name like newyork.com or one with a combination of city name and state name like losangelesca.com, are they within the law to do so?
Since it will matter what the site is about just assume that it is all about the city, designed to give visitors the most benefit. Subdomains may be added such as hotels.cityname.com which leads to a listing of various hotels in the city etc.
Also assume no products are sold, no reservations made, perhaps some advertising to cover costs but limited if any. Basicaly a solid site.
I've read several conflicting reports including some that say .info or .org are reserved for "official" city sites. Thoughts?
Registrars were also allowed to reserve names relating to their business.
Other than that I believe you are free to register / buy any .info names.
It also seems that newyork.com would sell for hundreds of millions, minimum. Actualy some major city domain names are owned by that cities major newspaper and provide an important source of income from existing advertisers. 12 of the countries top 20 most populated city geo domains are owned by one company as well that has won its battles already.
I think it would be cheaper to buy an island in the bahamas than to buy geo domains from sizeable cities. All city names were taken long ago anyway but its nice to know that should you win the lottery, you can trade it in and legaly run a major city site.
You can't claim to be an official site for the city, or claim any copyright to your domain name... but they are legal.
