Trustname takes a neutral stance on website content disputes, intervening only in cases of extreme illegal activity. As a registrar, its role is limited to domain registration and privacy protection, leaving content regulation to hosting providers and the legal system.
Key Takeaways
- Freedom of Speech Focus – Trustname supports an open internet and only intervenes in content disputes in extreme cases involving clear illegality.
- Registrar’s Limited Role – As a domain registrar, Trustname cannot control or remove website content for domain-only customers; that responsibility lies with web hosts and the judiciary.
- Two-Tier Privacy Protection – Domain owner details are shielded behind multi-jurisdictional proxy services, requiring three simultaneous court orders from different regions to access.
- Action Only in Severe Cases – Trustname will act against domains or hosted content only when there’s irrefutable evidence of illegal activity such as child abuse material, opioid sales, or hate speech.
- Legal Process for Disputes – Complaints must be directed to the hosting provider or pursued via ICANN’s UDRP or court orders; Trustname follows strict legal compliance before taking any action.
- Trustname Stance Is Simple – The Internet should be free for all, and everyone should have freedom of speech online. As a domain registrar, we contribute to this by facilitating the registration of domain names, giving each of our customers the means to help their audience find their content online.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
- Key Takeaways
- How Do Domain Names Work?
- Trustname Is Legally Compliant, But Hard On Domain Privacy
- How Trustname Directs Domain Disputes
- Guiding Our Customers To Safe Internet Usage
- Why Trustname Doesn’t Remove Content Online For Domain Name Registrations
- For Websites Hosted With Us?
- Scenarios Where Trustname May Act
- Different Roles That Power The Internet
- Rounding Up
Trustname stance is simple
The Internet should be free for all, and everyone should have freedom of speech online. As a domain registrar, we contribute to this by facilitating the registration of domain names, giving each of our customers the means to help their audience find their content online.
However, we recognize that some individuals exploit the freedom of the internet to promote illegal content, and we strongly condemn this practice.
At Trustname, our goal is to make the internet and ultimately, the world a better and safer place. While profit isn’t our primary focus, we still need to earn enough to provide strong legal protection for our users and team against scammers and other malicious individuals. We created Trustname to support developers, activists, journalists, NGOs, and anyone else working for the greater good. Scamming people for money or distributing dangerous drugs like opioids does nothing to improve the world, so we will never protect that kind of content.
To help build a safe web, Trustname has clear cut Terms and Conditions that guide our customers on acceptable uses of their domain names. However, the decision of whether a website’s content is legal or illegal doesn't fall under our jurisdiction except in extreme cases.
Learn how Trustname handles disputes and complaints involving website content and the proper channels to follow when filing a complaint against a website’s content.
How Do Domain Names Work?
- In simple terms, domain names are the human-friendly addresses of websites. Every internet enabled device has an IP address a string of numbers, such as 192.158.1.38 that computers use to recognize and communicate with each other online.
- To make it easier for humans (internet users) to recall website addresses, domain names were created to provide text aliases for these IP addresses.
- For example, whenever you want to visit the Amazon website, it’s much easier to remember the domain name ‘amazon.com’, composed of familiar letters, than the IP address of one of the web servers hosting the eCommerce brand’s website - e.g., 108.174.10.10.
- A great analogy that explains how domain names simplify visiting websites is your house address. You definitely know your house address in its simplified, text-based form, e.g., ‘No. 5, Raymond Avenue Drive’. But unless you are a pilot or seafarer, chances are you probably don’t know the coordinates of your house on a map, e.g., “72°36'30" North and 54°9'11".
Trustname Role as a Domain Registrar
Trustname is an ICANN accredited registrar that provides a platform for anyone to register domain names and the tools to manage their domains. When you register a domain name with Trustname, in accordance with ICANN regulations, we will collect your contact details name, email and address and verify your email to ensure you can be reached.
However, you can choose to use our third party domain name registration service, where we register your domain in the name of our partner proxy company, Perfect Privacy LLC, while you retain full control over your domain. This is the first layer of our Two Tier domain privacy, designed to make it hard to find domain contact info (even legally) without a legitimate reason.
If you go with Trustnames Two Tier route, we will never link your contact details to the domain name in the first place, ensuring the utmost privacy. When signing up for a Trustname account, you only need to provide your email address.
Trustname Is Legally Compliant, But Hard On Domain Privacy
The benefits of our Two-Tier domain privacy are two fold. We intentionally partnered with two proxy companies across different regions the U.S. and St. Kitts and Nevis to create an additional legal hurdle for anyone trying to obtain domain name information from us.
This multi jurisdictional approach means we will only disclose domain information or account information when we receive three simultaneous court orders across three regions: Saint Kitts and Nevis (where Perfect Privacy LLC is located), the United States (where Whois Privacy Protection Service LLC is located), and Estonia (where Trustname is headquartered).
Only when these conditions are met is Trustname obligated to release contact information associated with a domain name. You can read more on Trustnames Privacy Policy.
On the other hand, if a customer chooses to use their name to register their domains, they will be required to verify their contact information as per ICANN regulations. Failing to do so within the allotted time frame (typically 15 days) may result in their domain being suspended.
How Trustname Directs Domain Disputes
Domains registered on Trustname are administered on a first-come, first-served basis without any discrimination. If you believe that a domain name registered on Trustname infringes on a trademark, you’d need to file a complaint in court or submit a complaint to an approved dispute resolution service provider as directed by ICANN’s Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (UDRP).
Guiding Our Customers To Safe Internet Usage
Our extensive knowledge base, support materials, and Terms of Use help our customers not only learn how to use our platform to register and manage their domain names, but also use the internet responsibly and legally, contributing to a safe web.
Trustname only facilitates domain name registrations, and we give our customers the tools to manage their domain names. The judiciary (the court system) decides whether a website’s content is legal or not.
Why Trustname Doesn’t Remove Content Online For Domain Name Registrations
In one sentence, Trustname does not have a say over the content a website promotes that belongs to customers who have only registered their domains on our platforms.
Building on that, we only facilitate domain name registrations and provide our customers with the tools to manage their domain names. The judiciary (the court system) decides whether a website’s content is illegal or not.
When someone files a complaint about a website’s content with us, we typically refer them to report the issue to the web hosting provider and then the relevant legal authorities. In general, only court orders can compel us to sanction a domain name.
For customers who have only registered their domain names with us, we do not have access to the web servers hosting their content and cannot exercise the necessary legal authority to do so, except in extreme cases.
For Websites Hosted With Us?
Trustname also provides web hosting services. In cases where a customer registers a domain name with us and hosts their website content on our platform, we take a neutral stance whenever we receive abuse reports.
Unlike other registrars who prefer to disable any reported domains and remove website content without investigating the validity of complaints, Trustname won’t take any action against a website until we conduct a thorough investigation and find irrefutable evidence that a website has been engaged in illegal activities.
Scenarios Where Trustname May Act
Trustname is obligated to take action against a domain name or reveal domain information only in extreme cases where a website promotes illegal content like child abuse material, opioids, hate speech, etc. Generally, if the relevant legal authorities instruct us to do so (as per the three court orders), we may then suspend or delist a domain from our platform.
A domain name only acts as an address to a website. Even if we do de-list a domain name, the website owner can simply assign a new domain name to their website and get it up and running in no time.
For websites hosted on our platform, Trustname has more influence over curtailing illegal content and will have to act and respond to cases of abuse. However, as with domain only subscriptions, we will only act in extreme cases.
After conducting a thorough investigation and finding clear evidence of illegal content, we will first report the case to the relevant government authorities and only then suspend a domain or website if directed to do so.
Different Roles That Power The Internet
To help you understand the limited role we have over website content, especially for customers who have only registered their domain names with us, it’s essential to outline the different entities involved in the internet and their respective roles.
Taking actions against a domain name is generally complex, and there’s a lot of yellow tape to walk through. Let’s see some of these roles -
- Registrar – A domain registrar is a company that facilitates domain name registrations and enables the public to lease domain names. Registrars provide domain search engines to help customers find available domain names. A registrar like Trustname also provides additional services, such as domain privacy, SSL certificates, and a DNS management portal, to help you manage the backend of your domain names.
- Registry – A registry is a company responsible for managing a particular top level domain, such as .com, .net, .org, .ca, and so on. For example, Verisign is the registry responsible for the .com domain name.
Registries manage records of all the domain names using the TLD and act as extensions of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) to enforce the body’s regulations pertaining to domain names for a particular TLD. - Web Hosting Provider – A web hosting provider, also known as a web host, is a company that provides storage space on web servers to website owners, allowing their websites to be accessible online. Trustname is also a web hosting provider, enabling customers to manage their domain names and web hosting resources from a single account.
Any website online resides on the servers provided by the web host. Whenever a visitor’s browser requests a website’s content, it is actually requesting the web host’s servers, where the website is stored via its IP address. - Domain Holder or Registrant – The domain owner or registrant is the person who registers a domain name and is listed as the official contact for the domain. The registrant is ‘the owner’ of the domain name and is responsible for renewing the domain when its subscription expires. For customers using our Two Tier domain privacy, Perfect Privacy LLC is the official registrant of the domain and serves as the primary point of contact for any domain related issues or disputes. However, we notify the registrant of the domain to give them time to resolve any potential issues whenever a dispute is filed on their domain name.
It’s essential to note that, in most cases, the domain registrant is also the website author the person responsible for creating and publishing content on a website; however, this may not always be the case. The website author is responsible for the content they publish to ensure it doesn’t break the law or infringe on any existing copyrights. - Internet Service Provider (ISP) – Are companies that provide people and businesses with access to the Internet. ISPs include companies such as mobile carriers, cable network providers, and telephone companies.
In most cases, ISPs have no responsibility for a website’s content, but they can block user access to a particular website if directed by a court order. - The Judiciary – The judiciary in most countries consists of the Supreme Court and any subsidiary courts. They direct the enforcement of the law and, in the context of websites, determine whether a website’s content is legal or not. Whenever anyone files a dispute against a domain name and goes to court to obtain a court order, the judiciary then decides on the action to be taken against the domain name.
Rounding Up
There are several entities with different roles that enable content published on the internet. As a registrar, Trustname is only responsible for facilitating domain registrations; scrutinizing website content doesn’t fall under our scope of influence.
For websites hosted on our platform, we will only take action in extreme cases of illegal content after a thorough investigation. Trustnames Terms of Use outline the terms a registrant agrees to when registering a domain name on our platform, granting us independent authority to act in the event these terms are violated.
Important Note
At the time of this writing, there are no laws that hold registrars responsible for the content published on websites. The registrant is responsible for their website content, and only their website provider has some discretion in reviewing their content.
To bring a website to order, you should always consult the proper legal channels where the website is hosted the registrar has no say over a website’s content and that’s why Trustname takes a back seat on website content issues.