Argentina to Take Away .AR Domain Names: ccTLD Danger

ccTLDs carry lots of risks with the rewards.

With TRAFFIC ccTLDs just around the corner, it’s only fitting that another example of the risks of registering country code domain names ought to pop up this month.

As spotted by Internet Commerce Association, The Argentina Ministry of Foreign affairs is limiting the number of com.ar and org.ar domain names that any one entity can register to 200. The organization is doing this since it believes there is abuse of the system by registrants registering many domain names without intending to use them.

This change will also affect existing registrants, as they will only be allowed to renew 200 domain names. So if someone has 1,000 .ar domains, they will have to select the best 200 to keep.

Country code domain names can be very rewarding to investors, but they carry extreme risks. Countries have lots of leeway in how they manage them and can even censor certain types of domain names. This timely move ought to make for interesting debate at next week’s conference in Amsterdam.

[See rough translation of resolution limiting registrations to 200.]