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A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

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TLD and the law (iusearchlinux.fyi)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Hi there, I'm currently looking into renting a domain from cloudflare for convenient access to my hosted services from outside my home. It seems some of the cheapest options for the domain name I want to use are country TLDs (.uk, .us). Does this bind me to their laws in any way? can anyone come at me for hosting (e.g. Illegally downloaded content) on their TLD?

Regardless, is there any reason I shouldn't use cloudflare for this? any drawbacks I should be aware of?

Edit: I should mention I'm currently using duckdns for free and the reason I want to move is that it seems some organizations (like my university and workplace) block duckdns (for reasons beyond me).

Edit 2: So to my understanding there's not a big one, but some risk involved, so I think I'll pay a bit more for a non-ccTLD. Thanks everyone!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The short answer is no, you aren't bound to the nation's laws unless you have a "presence" in their jurisdiction - it could be argued that by using CloudFlare you might be subject to US law because the traffic runs through systems owned by a US company, or you are giving money to a US company by using them as a registrar. The worst they could probably do is order CloudFlare to turnover records or stop doing business with you, but still. Typically that would require lawyers and be expensive, so unless you've really pissed off someone with a ton of cash you are probably safe.

The actual domain itself doesn't really bind you beyond the registration rules, which the country themselves set - typically these will allow for cancellation of the registration for any reason.