These rules are very strict, and very interesting too. They have generated a lot of
paperwork and
headaches over the years. They are the main reason
.nu and
.com are more commonly used by
Swedish corporations than
.se. Let's take a look at them, shall we?
REGULATION Ba:
The domain name shall refer to an enterprise with a connection to Sweden, and reflect the name of the enterprise as this is stated on the registration certificate issued by the Swedish authorities.
REGULATION Fa:
If the domain name refers to a company, this must be registered with the Swedish Patent and Registration Office (PRV) or have been allocated a corporate identity number by another Swedish authority.
What does this mean? This means that if you want to register the
domain everything2.com, you'll have to
make a company called Everything2 (or something that could have Everything2 as its acronym) then patent that name, just to get that nifty little domain. People have, over the years, registered companies with names equivalent of "
Live Nude Lesbians", just to get a nice domain name.
I wouldn't want to be the person who actually has to go to the patent office, look the clerk in the eyes and tell him that I want to patent the name of my new company called "sex". (Some people may experience lust, pleasure, horniness, shooting pains in the left arm or similar things from doing this, but I'll just ignore that aspect in this write-up.)
REGULATION C:
Only one domain name can be registered per enterprise name.
This is an interesting one, too. In the US it's
common practice that if you register hotmail.com, then you register all common misspellings of the name too, hotmail.net,
misspellings of hotmail.net and so on. Now, in
Sweden, this is not allowed, unless you form several new
companies -- that, of course, have to be called hotmial, htomail, hotmali etc. etc. Geeze.
Plus, there are lots of subdomains to .se, which seem to have the sole purpose of making .se domains used by just about nobody.
Wait -- it gets
stupidier! Some companies even have to add the COUNTY LETTERS in their domains! Yay, yippy skippy! I'm doing a happy dance of joy as I have to add a goddamn A before the .se, just because some bureocrats decided that it would work out best back in 1992!
Add in the fact that .se domains are
expensive, are surrounded by
crocodile pits filled with complex
Kafka-esque forms and paperwork that must be filled in, and you have The Domain That Only Retards Want To Register!
Yes, I'm talking from first-hand experience. Gee, how did you notice? : )