Going back to bicycles, Brooks of England only use leather from Italy as they discovered that modern veterinary practices were focusing so heavily on meat production for the animals that the animals were producing a thinner and more brittle leather that didn't age well and had more imperfections.
Brooks saddles require a thick leather, single piece with virtually no defects. So they had to find a source of leather where the primary use of the animal was the hide and food and other products were secondary.
Fascinating stuff. Beyond particular breeds of livestock, it's about their environment, the country laws relating to veterinary practises and handling, etc.
my guess is that it's the "most expensive" because you register, you pay, and then it gets seized and resold without your knowledge and without a way to appeal it. The author said games.ng got sold for 10,000USD/year (which WOULD make it the most expensive).
I think the seizure adds to the price. Imagine ycombinator.com or even reddit.com sold to the highest bidder? Millions in damages.
How stupid would you have to be, to pay $10,000 for a domain stolen from the rightful owner, when they could just turn around and steal it back from you?
I guess this proves that there's a cosmic sense of humor? The ISO codes when parceled out pre-Internet ended up giving the most valuable (in English) Internet domain suffixes to some of the least stable countries (ly for Libya, sy for Syria, and so forth).
Using a domain from an oppressive nation always seemed weird to me. Both in terms of censorship/hijacking risk, but also simply funding them. .ly is one of the classics there, but not the only one.
Also, the NIC in Libya threatened several times claiming that .ly domains had to fall within Sharia. I can guarantee that most bit.ly URLs rarely fell under that requirement.
Then again, is this any surprise in a country like Nigeria? That country has a long, long way to go to claw its way from the absolute worst in terms of corruption.
Nira, the registrar for .ng, apparently retracts valuable domains and sells them. The author claims that happened to gaming.ng, which was taken from him and sold for $10 000 usd/y.
Two years later, they might want to reconsider the .is TLD. It's about $50/year and open to international folks, however they do have some unique NS requirements[1].
You need a source that Nigeria is a dangerous country? I didn't think this was a contentious claim, but for an easy go-to lets use the US State Department's travel warnings.
NIRA is an org in a developing nation full of violence. The idea of conducting a business transaction with them over the internet from another country and expecting everything to be on the up and up is such privileged nonsense I've broken my personal embargo on using that word.
It's established fact that Nigeria is a hot-spot for a lot of trouble. Just look at any of the metrics the UN publishes on corruption and murder rates.
Of course, this is just an average. There are parts that are fairly civilized, no worse than any asian country, but there are also parts that are out of control.
I am against what NIRA did. It is indeed really outrageous. But you don't because of that say "a country is dangerous". The statement is way "bigger" than the context in discussion.
It is sad that only negative/stereotypical stories from Nigeria seem to make it to the front page of HN.
As you see on the comment in the thread, Nigerians are against this behavior. I had 2 domains taken from me too ironically one was takeaway.com.ng.
I believe that there a procedures for this to be sorted out ICANN I believe is the arbiter of these types of issues. I would encourage the victim to follow such process. Perhaps someone here can suggest how such cases can/have been dealt with.
I'd like to stress again that this is a rogue incident and not normal like a few of the stereotypical comments below will want to make you believe.
I think ICANN generally washes their hands of national TLDs - the whole point of national TLDs is to let countries manage them on their own. Presumably that means the Nigerian government is free to run .ng however they see fit, even if it means letting this extortionist agency milk their users.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 124 ms ] thread.nr is $500 USD a year.
http://www.cenpac.net.nr/dns/index.html
I've dealt with them before. You really, really don't want to.
.sm for San Marino is GBP 225 per year with Gandi
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churra_%28sheep%29
.cc domains are cheap though, so had to think of our own domain for a good example of a stable nice domain.
Going back to bicycles, Brooks of England only use leather from Italy as they discovered that modern veterinary practices were focusing so heavily on meat production for the animals that the animals were producing a thinner and more brittle leather that didn't age well and had more imperfections.
Brooks saddles require a thick leather, single piece with virtually no defects. So they had to find a source of leather where the primary use of the animal was the hide and food and other products were secondary.
Fascinating stuff. Beyond particular breeds of livestock, it's about their environment, the country laws relating to veterinary practises and handling, etc.
Off the top of my head I can think of .rw, which costs €220/yr (~$300) to foreign purchasers from one of the few registrars that provide it.
I think the seizure adds to the price. Imagine ycombinator.com or even reddit.com sold to the highest bidder? Millions in damages.
.ly matches the ly suffix in English for example. So, thus you have adf.ly ... adfly.
[1] http://benmetcalfe.com/blog/2010/10/the-ly-domain-space-to-b...
Then again, is this any surprise in a country like Nigeria? That country has a long, long way to go to claw its way from the absolute worst in terms of corruption.
It's not that it was too long - it's more that it was just illegible.
[1] http://www.isnic.is/en/domain/req
http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/country/ni...
http://travel.state.gov/content/passports/english/alertswarn...
NIRA is an org in a developing nation full of violence. The idea of conducting a business transaction with them over the internet from another country and expecting everything to be on the up and up is such privileged nonsense I've broken my personal embargo on using that word.
Chicago has a lot of violence. I would not go a day say America is a dangerous nation.
It fits the stereotype you crave for. Congratulations.
Of course, this is just an average. There are parts that are fairly civilized, no worse than any asian country, but there are also parts that are out of control.
It is sad that only negative/stereotypical stories from Nigeria seem to make it to the front page of HN.
As you see on the comment in the thread, Nigerians are against this behavior. I had 2 domains taken from me too ironically one was takeaway.com.ng.
I believe that there a procedures for this to be sorted out ICANN I believe is the arbiter of these types of issues. I would encourage the victim to follow such process. Perhaps someone here can suggest how such cases can/have been dealt with.
I'd like to stress again that this is a rogue incident and not normal like a few of the stereotypical comments below will want to make you believe.
I believe there is a rogue employee there. Did not have the energy to pursue it.
What I'm saying is that it is not an official policy. Lack of governance and follow up like the guy who is the subject of this thread.
How did he even things it was right he get it in the first place? Domain squatter hurt the web and for once one get hurt back.
but do you know that .ng belongs to nigeria,a country of over 170 million people, only 26,000 domain names were registered with NiRA.
do you know south africa,a country of 50 million people, but nearly 1,000,000 domains registered with .za registry.
compare with other cctld such as .de/.co.uk/.co.za...which should have more local registered,.ng is the most expensive cctld.
http://www.DomainRobbing.com (DomainRobbi.ng,No appeal, no compensation?!) visit the link for more details.