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!
It does not, but whoever controlling those domains may have their own rules about who may use them, and terminate your account if they feel you’ve broken their rules.
One common rule is that you have to actually be a person or company in that location. I know that’s true for .eu (which was real fun for brexit), probably for .uk, but I don’t think it’s a requirement for .us.
If you really want that name, I’d pick a non-ccTLD and pay a bit more.
Thanks for the quick reply! Assuming I host a Jellyfin instance for instance (pun intended), can they actually accuse me of breaking rules without a valid login? afaik for non-users the login page is as far as they (should be able to) go. As for the domain name, I’m not actually set on one specific name, but it seemed from the few I tried that .uk and .us are consistently much cheaper (~$5/yr as opposed to ~$10/yr).
Don’t forget to turn the proxy off or risk account restrictions/warnings/termination for breaking the rules of CF.
Watch out: Country specific TLDs may be aubject to restrictions like .eu or .de requiring to live there. Some may even require an adress there.
.de doesn’t require residency but requires a local contact.
Many European registrars work around these restrictions by providing their own local proxy for your benefit (for a cost). Some examples (that also include a list of such ccTLD’s):
Thanks for correcting :)
If I remember correctly it does apply to .eu though. At least I am partially right ;)
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.
You can use noip.com for free dynamic DNS
And if you’re concerned about whoever finding out you’re hosting illegal content you can have a WireGuard server and have everything go through it instead of being open to the web. This also has the advantage of being essentially undetectable from the outside
I used to connect through wireguard but I want to be able to use it from devices that aren’t necessarily my own, both for sharing with friends and for personal access from friends and family devices (e.g. my parents’ android tv).
Edit: Also I just tried to go on noip.com from my workplace and it seems they blocked it as well… so that’s no good.
