New blogpost:
# Time to drop .legal?
Just my ponderings at this point.
Perhaps I am over-worrying?
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@neil I feel like a UK one is useful as you operate in the UK, and presumably know mostly about law within UK too (though given England vs Scotland vs... That may still be overly broad).
I quite like decoded.legal as a domain, and tld reputation does sound like a concern, but then if not body has reported issues receiving your mail then you're probably fine. I'm not expert on email, but I'd have though if your domain is established and following modern config then 8t should stay fine?
> if not body has reported issues receiving your mail then you're probably fine.
That is my hope.
There is always the risk that someone emailed me, and, for whatever reason, *their* mailserver / network config inhibited it, and I would never know about it. But hopefully that is of low likelihood.
@neil TLD reliability/sovereignty should probably be considered more carefully.
Over the years we've lost rights to an .ltd.uk (company changed name/shape), had an .ngo suspended (needed to re-register if we were still valid to have that domain, but email bounced), the fun of .eu with Brexit, and there's the on/off risk of .io with the Chagos Islands.
Maybe the best risk management for it is to always have a backup domain ready to go if you need to swap, rather than waiting for an incident.
@neil
I don't think you need to worry about domain reputation except for email, and that is going to be mostly you sending email to people not them contacting you, which is something you can work around.
I would (and do) worry more about the continuing stability of TLDs run by US entities, but if things go bad there I suspect that your clients will understand the short disruption while you switch to co.uk.
@neil I'd see if your emails are adversely affected by the reputation of the TLD. That would be my main concern.
But, as someone who has a variety of esoteric domains, it can be annoying to have to say "em oh be eye. No there's no dotcom at the end. Yes I know it looks strange. No not dot coh dot you kay either. Yes, that will get there."
It's a pity .legal isn't as regulated as .bank or some of the other professional TLDs.
@neil the jurisdiction thing is interesting. I had to give up a .eu domain due to Brexit, so I can see the risk of the registry changing the rules.
But the flip side is - do you want your domain protected if (for example) the UK ordered you cut off? Perhaps not a live concern for the services you're providing - but I think having domains from multiple jurisdictions reduces that risk.
> do you want your domain protected if (for example) the UK ordered you cut off?
As you say, for me, and for what I do, I think that the likelihood of this close to zero.
Plus, I would have more opportunity for recourse than if I lost a non-UK domain, even if that is still limited.
Yes, having multiple domains across different regions is probably a good idea.
@neil @Edent
@Slash909uk and I had similar jurisdiction concerns recently, as we operate primarily via our .com name. We have thus far chosen to move DNS hosting to the UK (thanks to Beasts), but the whole DNS has a jurisdiction problem, being a hierarchy with ICANN (US) at the top (operating the SRS):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_name_server
Until there is some distributed concensus mechanism to form the root zone this is unsolvable. See also PKI hierarchies and de-facto gatekeepers (Mozilla, distros, etc.).
> No there's no dotcom at the end. Yes I know it looks strange. No not dot coh dot you kay either. Yes, that will get there."
Yes! I've been there :)
@neil It doesn't read as over-worry so much as planning for the future.
In your position, I think I'd be half-tempted to start having new clients/contacts email a non .legal domain.
Doesn't help with those who already do, but stops building what might become an issue (mail clients handle replying from the correct address sanely, so it doesn't really add any day-to-day overhead to you). If the day comes it is an issue, only x% need moving over
Yes, that is a sensible way of looking at it.
And I can probably get some existing clients to move through a combination of letting people know, reply-to, switching my own usage so people just reply to the address that I am using, and, eventually, an auto-responder.
@neil Yep exactly that - as soon as you move to switching your own usage, half the problem is solved because the risk of being caught in a .legal wide spam-block goes away
@ben What started me thinking about this was less email delivery and more the risk (probably very low, but still) of reliance on a TLD controlled by an entity in the USA...
@neil i feel fancy TLDs could work for web-ish stuff or hostnames or maybe even XMPP, but for email – original gTLDs and ccTLDs.
@neil I don’t think it matters. The vast majority of users never actually type it - and don’t care.
@neil Does this link lead somewhere I don’t want to visit?
@neil And not to a video streaming service?
@missnfranchised No, I tend to limit that to special occasions.
@neil I think an obvious option is to just point all the domains you own at the same server and let nginx/whatever serve the same stuff for every domain.
You could use <link rel="alternate" to link them all together too, although I don't think this would magically do anything other than prove to technical people aiming to block all your domains that these are all your domains
@M0YNG I'm less worried about web than about email, really - and then it is more about stopping others sending to the .legal address before it becomes under someone else's control or ceases to operate.
@neil Given that you put actual question marks in this post:
I used to have .com and .eu business domains as well.
Now I just have .dk because keeping track of one set of domain rules and managing those risks is plenty for my tired old brain.
Getting blocked is the much lesser concern, in my book, than losing control of your domain name.
> Getting blocked is the much lesser concern, in my book, than losing control of your domain name.
I agree.
@neil I see your thinking, and we have the same issue with a .host domain.
Although we do everything correctly to authentic emails and web, some spam filters just lump us with the rest of the internet 😔
Had the same thought of switching to something under UK jurisdiction, and hopefully reputation.
@nbwpuk As far as I know, I have not had a problem with email delivery. But perhaps we have had a problem and I have just not known, or else we will, one day, have such a problem...
@neil fwiw, the "unconventional" TLDs are strong negative signals in a lot of areas, although .legal seems to be less troublesome than most.
While I *do* own a (super cheap) .xyz, anything I care about is on a "traditional" TLD
