.EU domains are only for EU residents!

Just last month I was all praises of the European Union for its pioneering work in framing laws that protect the interest of online users with #GDPR, and, for announcing a bug-bounty to find security holes in the Open Source software it uses including VLC Player, 7-Zip, Filezilla, KeePass, Notepad++ and others.

But this week’s guidance from UK government for owners of .EU domains is not encouraging. It appears that .EU domains can only be bought by EU residents and UK residents who already have a .EU domain may be sued or get kicked out post #Brexit. Registrars including GoDaddy are already implementing the rules.

In the past I had bought top-level domains including country level domains (like .in, .us and .uk) from India or USA, it didn’t matter. Now the situation is changing and the world is facing a real risk of Internet balkanization.