In a startling move, the Swedish regulator PTS apparently has declared that it wants to ban the term “bank” from all domain names registered under the Swedish .SE top-level domain. It notified the .SE registry about its decision in a letter (PDF, Swedish) on August 27, 2009 and requested the domain registration rules to be changed accordingly. All applications for domain registrations would then have to be approved prior to the registration to make sure that the registering organization really is a bank or that the domain won’t lead to any misunderstandings.
Not only is this a very surprising move but it is also alarming, considering that what PTS is asking for is to make the inclusion of a perfectly generic term in domain names illegal. Against the background of the current financial crisis and the increasing number of online scams I can understand why PTS might want to have more control over banks in Sweden and how they do business on the Internet, but banning generic terms from domain names is something that should not be tolerated. After all, it is very well possible that in the future they would begin to ban more words and censor the .SE name space if this ruling really goes through.
What remains to be done is to hope that the .SE registry will fight this demand, and that it will successfully repel it.
(via CircleID)
Related posts:
Would that apply to the financial industry only? Word “bank” can have other applications elsewhere.
Agree, this is a bad case, and may not go inline with European legislation.
As far as I know, all domains that you are about to register would have to be approved prior to registration. I think they would allow the registration of domains including the word “bank” if it is clear that it is a bank or if it unrelated to the finance industry and does not lead to any misunderstandings.