XYZ Stands for Democracy
Posted by Daniel Negari in Featured, gTLDs
.xyz is for every website, everywhere. We really mean that. XYZ, now and in the future, will always protect people’s rights and will not relinquish that to the Chinese government or any other government for that matter.
To be 100% clear, XYZ is an organization that strongly supports freedom of speech, privacy, and anti-censorship for all internet users. In fact, we ran an awareness campaign and made donations to the Electronic Frontier Foundation last November to protect freedom of speech. We have also been a vocal supporter of privacy protection for your domains and net neutrality.
Starting this weekend, there have been a number of articles published with inaccurate information regarding our upcoming accreditation in China. Speculation exists that there is some kind of banned list being driven by the Chinese government. This is not true. There is no banned list. There are no restrictions to registering a .xyz domain, with the exception of Specification 5 of the Registry Agreement, which all new domain extensions are bound to.
The Wall Street Journal even went as far as to claim that domains like liberty.xyz and statueofliberty.xyz are being blocked due to a “deal” that I made with the Chinese government. This is completely untrue. By doing a basic WHOIS lookup or visiting the websites, anyone can easily see that both of these domains are actually registered and live on the internet.
This speculation began when a few lines of technical documentation filed with ICANN were misinterpreted. To clear the air, this technical document addressed the proactive abuse mitigation we will take to shut down phishing, pharming, malware, and other abuse in China. This is consistent with how we currently suspend abusive domains everywhere else in the world. So it is worth repeating again – THERE IS NO BANNED LIST.
No deal whatsoever has been, or will be, made by XYZ with the Chinese government or any other government to compromise free speech. Nothing on any existing .xyz domain or future .xyz domain will be censored by the registry.
Becoming accredited in China means that .xyz will soon be one of the first new non-China-based domain extension that can actually be used by Chinese citizens to have a web presence (more information to come). This is a significant milestone for XYZ and me personally, since our mission has always been to bring the next generation of internet users online.
I challenge anyone reading or questioning this to go to their registrar and search for any .xyz domain. If it is available, register it – because you have the freedom to use it.
D
The domain “Tiananmen.xyz” is not available…
Tiananmen.xyz is not available because the domain was already registered on 11-01-2014 by Registrant name: “mengfanyi”. Please check the public WHOIS record: https://whois.domaintools.com/tiananmen.xyz
Daniel — I did eventually check that — unfortunately I posted my comment first.
We were getting ready to publish an article on the situation, and then I read your blog poste. The EFF has suggested that you make an unambiguous statement that Internet users in China and worldwide will be free to register strings that offend the Chinese government in any of the .xyz registry’s top-level domain. Could you do that now?
Justin – the purpose of this post was to make the clear statement that all internet users worldwide will be free to register any .xyz domains they want, even if they offend the Chinese government. We will continue to spread the message LOUD. I would be happy to connect with you for an interview. Please send me an email.
A lot of false info out there right now, not only on XYZ but new top level global domains in general. Seems like some people really don’t want to see any new extension succeed. Some of these articles out there are hit pieces, just down right false in the worse possible way. What’s worse some domainers actually believe it.
The answer: Verisign haha
Fortune and Wsj deserve a suit for defamation…
I own liberty.xyz, also own other 2000+ .xyz names.
Hello,
Do you think in future there will be any problem with such domains like liberty.xyz ? what precautions can take by ICAAN and internic?
Liberty.xyz is a live site. There are no problems with this / other domains, nor do I expect there will there be any problems in the future. The authors of the WSJ / Fortune / EFF stories have retracted or updated / rewrote their positions.
Being fluent in Mandarin, I’ve had to defend XYZ over these couple of articles a couple of times at my workplace earlier this month… what Dan said above, is basically fact.
Every single office operating in China, foreign or not, must follow local law. Part of that is in what can or can not be transmitted. People throw dirt on XYZ for following local laws of a foreign jurisdiction.
But let’s have a look at this:
– Google, where in AdWords, “Taiwan” is named a Region instead of a Country.
– Supercell, where in the Clash of Clans client, you can not input the characters 中共 or 天安门.
– Lonely Planet Guides, whom for years were not allowed into China until wording was altered to better reflect historical neutrality.
Foreign companies moving into China will abide by Chinese law. There is nothing weird about this. It doesn’t mean their western website or product (experience) is different. They are abiding by local laws.
Applaud to Daniel for being able to explain it himself, as well!
The reason that I have bumped into this website is that I have registered a domain for an experimental project Freedium.
Wangbei
The domain is freedium.xyz
My name is Louis and I am the owner of ilove.xyz and yes I see a brilliant future of .xyz that was why I took it days before.