EFF paper: Which Internet registries offer best protection for domain owners?

[Matthew Chan]

The EFF released a very important white-paper for domain and website owners:

"Which Internet registries offer the best protection for domain owners?"

https://www.eff.org/files/2017/07/26/domain_registry_whitepaper.pdf

Here are their short answer recommendations.

Against Trademark Bullies

For better protection against trademark bullies, you should generally avoid registering your domain in any of the new gTLDs, and be aware that it may be more difficult to successfully register in a Donuts domain. Trademark policies vary between the country code TLDs, which we review below in more detail. As before, the ultimate protection against domain takedowns is provided by the use of a .onion domain, but at the cost of accessibility for the majority of Internet users

Against Copyright Bullies

For protection against copyright bullies, you should consider choosing a domain name operated by a registry that doesn’t have, and isn’t considering adopting, a streamlined policy to takedown domain names alleged to be associated with copyright infringement. This means avoiding the domains operated by Donuts and Radix. You could also look at the country-code domains for which we provide details below, and if it isn’t necessary for your domain name to be easily accessible to a broad general public, you might also consider using a .onion domain name.

Against Overseas Speech Regulators

For protection against overseas speech regulators, you should consider whether the country code domain registry based in your own country offers good protection for speech. Details of some of these are given in the table below. You should also look carefully at the policies of the gTLD registries, and consider avoiding those that allow an overseas “trusted notifier” other than a court to initiate a domain takedown process. Once again, an .onion domain offers the best protection, but also the least usability for the average Internet user.

Against Identity Theft and Marketing

To protect your privacy as a domain registrant, we recommend registering in a country code domain that doesn’t provide public access to domain registrant data, or registering a domain through a registrar that provides free privacy proxy services. Failing that, you should consider paying for a privacy proxy service, or using a .onion domain, if you are able
to operate your website over the less universally-available Tor network.


Matthew's Easy Answer

As far as I am concerned, the easy rule of thumb is the traditional .com, .net, and .org are still the safest domains to use to combat trademark and copyright bullies. And because they are handled by U.S.-based registry, you will have the best free speech / 1st Amendment protections.

And in terms of domain registrars, I recommend Google Domains. At $12, domain privacy is included, not an extra add-on cost.  Stay away from GoDaddy and other rip-off domain registries that charge too much (over $15 per domain) or use hanky-panky sales tactics.  Not the cheapest but Google general protects their users and they have good support.