--- type: "page" canonical: "https://unique.domains/courses/buy-names-that-sell/the-registrys-rules-outrank-yours" --- Last updated: 2026-11-13 Version: 2.34 # Read an ending's rules before you hold names there Each ending has a registry, which sets the price, decides who may hold a name, can take one back and can change the rules after you buy. Read its rules before you hold twenty names there. Course: Buy names that sell Chapter 7 of 13, 13 min read Published 2026-11-10, reviewed 2026-11-11. You have found an ending with good words still open. The first year is fair, you have read the renewal, and you are about to register twenty names. Yet everything you checked is a price. The company that runs the ending decides more: who may hold a name, which names it keeps, what happens at expiry, and when a name stops working. It can change those rules after you buy. Below is what registries have done, or set out to do, to names already held: a rule review that named investors, a new registry bound to audit its holders, a hold on a famous name, and a country code ICANN planned to retire. Then come the filters outside the registry. By the end, you can read an ending's rules before you register the twentieth name, and know what to ask. ## What you will be able to do - You can list what a registry can change after you buy, beyond the price. - You can read who may hold a name on an ending, and whether resale is allowed there. - You can tell apart a hold on a name, a change of registry and the retirement of a country code. - You can test a newer ending in apps, forms and browsers before you rely on it. ## The registry's rules sit above yours Every ending has a registry, the company or body that keeps its list of names. You hold a name through a registrar, under a registration agreement, and that agreement defers to the registry's policies. So your name lives inside those rules. ICANN contracts the generic endings, which are called gTLDs, and its registry agreement limits what their registries may do. A country ending, called a ccTLD, answers to its own country instead. ICANN has little oversight of country endings, and each country can set its own policies, as Andrew Allemann wrote on Domain Name Wire on 9 October 2024. That article pointed to .ai, the code of the island of Anguilla, where basically one person set the policies, and those policies had changed. On 1 June 2026, Allemann wrote the same of .co: it is not subject to ICANN's rulemaking, and it can change its policies as it wishes. ## Who may hold a name, and how that changes Many endings limit who may hold a name, and that limit can change. EURid, the .eu registry, told UK holders about Brexit: from 1 January 2021 they would no longer be eligible, unless they showed an entity, a residence or a citizenship in a member state (OnlineDomain, 28 December 2020). Some endings check a holder's identity. On .music, holders must verify their identity, and their link to the music industry, within 90 days, according to Domain Incite on 1 October 2024. Until then, the name is on hold and does not resolve. Without that check, the registry can delete or suspend the name, with no refund. Other endings bar holding a name only to resell it. Australia's policy, as Domain Incite described it on 14 June 2018, had barred this since 2012: nobody could register a .au name only to resell or transfer it. Investors relied on a gap in that rule: a name that showed ads was not held for resale alone. The case below is the 2026 move on that gap by auDA, the .au registry. It also planned, subject to board approval, to grandfather existing .com.au and .net.au holders (Domain Name Wire, 21 October 2026). That would spare those holders the new rule, while new registrations would still face it. ## Case: A .au rule review that named domain investors - Panel vote: 4 for, 2 against, 1 abstention - Registrants with over 50 names: 3,386 of 1,702,174 - Names they held: 582,895 - All .au names: 4.4 million auDA, the .au registry, had approved a recommendation that was one of ten from a yearlong review, Kevin Murphy wrote on Domain Incite on 8 September 2026. If implemented, it effectively limits a registrant in .com.au and .net.au to names that match the registrant's own name, business name or trademark. It would remove the catch-all that let anyone register a name for any purpose. The recommendation passed the seven-person panel by four votes to two. One member abstained and later sided with the minority. The panel voted unanimously against banning ads on names outright, but the majority found that registering a name only to earn from ads may disproportionately benefit domain investors. A minority rebuttal said the majority had identified no harm from the current rule. A plan would go to public consultation first. To count investors, the panel treated any registrant with more than 50 names as a likely investor. auDA's data showed 3,386 such registrants out of 1,702,174, and they held 582,895 names between them. By our arithmetic, that is about 0.2% of registrants holding about 13% of the 4.4 million .au names, or some 170 names each on average. For an investor, the lesson is where the risk sat. No price, no renewal and no sales median showed it: it sat in a policy review that named domain investors in its reasons. A portfolio held on one ending is a bet on that registry's next review. Source: Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "Domainer AI slop crackdown on the cards in Oz", 2026-09-08, https://domainincite.com/31918-domainer-ai-slop-crackdown-on-the-cards-in-oz ## Re-priced, reserved, taken back or on hold Premium names on newer endings sit in price tiers that the registry sets. A registry can raise the renewal of a whole tier if it gives registrars six months' notice (Allemann, Domain Name Wire, 26 July 2022). Moving one name to a higher tier when it is already held is less clear. Allemann, writing on Domain Name Wire on 26 July 2022, knew of no such case. ICANN's first reading was that such a move might break the uniform renewal pricing in its contract, pending a full review. Expiry can reset the price. When a name expires, Allemann added, the price can change for the next holder. On .co, premium renewals came after the ending's launch, as Domain Name Wire reported on 1 June 2026. Names that were already registered kept the old renewal, but a name that is fully deleted and re-registered takes the premium. The registry's new rule, due by 1 October 2026, would bar registrars from auctioning an expired .co name without the registry's authorization. A registry can also hold names back from sale and release them later. Identity Digital planned to release about 5,000 reserved names at premium first-year prices, with rock.band and box.wine among them (Domain Incite, 1 September 2022). A registry can take a name back, too. ICM Registry deleted ads.porn and ads.adult about two days after a buyer registered them, OnlineDomain reported on 11 June 2015. ICM's chairman said the two names had been released by mistake, and that they were cancelled as the registration agreement provides. The registrar refunded the buyer, and the chairman also offered the buyer another reserved name. And a registry can put a name on hold. Telegram's short link for usernames and channels, t.me, showed a Server Hold, which is a status that the registry sets (Domain Name Wire, 13 July 2026). Once t.me was back online, the .me registry said the hold was due to US sanctions rules. Domain Name Wire, updating its report of 13 July 2026, added that one link on t.me led to a company on the sanctions list. ## When the registry changes hands or the code goes When the registry of a gTLD quits, ICANN has a safety net. ICANN placed .desi, an ending with about 1,900 names, with its Emergency Back-End Registry Operator while it sought a new operator (Domain Name Wire, 17 October 2023). That emergency operator was set up to keep names working when a registry shuts down. Desi Networks had chosen to end its contract. A country code can be retired. ICANN's policy, approved in 2022, retires a code once its territory leaves ISO 3166-1, the standard list of country codes. The retirement comes after five years by default, and that period can be extended by up to five more years. ICANN had privately told the .su registry of a plan to retire .su by 2030, according to Domain Name Wire on 11 March 2025. .su, the Soviet Union's code, left the ISO list in 1992. It still held around 100,000 names. ICANN's chief executive said that no formal notice had been sent, and that there was no timeline for one (Domain Incite, 13 March 2025). As .su shows, a code that could be retired can stay open for decades. ## Case: .us changes registry and must audit its holders - .us names, end of July 2026: 1.8 million, about 500,000 fewer in a year - Wholesale fee in 2019: $6.50 The US agency NTIA had given the .us contract to Identity Digital, replacing GoDaddy Registry, Kevin Murphy reported on Domain Incite on 5 October 2026. The contract was signed on 30 September 2026. It runs for seven years at most, and it starts with a nine-month move away from GoDaddy. A .us name is limited to US citizens and residents, and to businesses legally registered there. The new contract commits Identity Digital to a full audit of current registration data, then to monthly random spot-checks, to make sure holders meet that rule. All 256 accredited .us registrars must also be re-accredited. The contract does not set Identity Digital's price. The wholesale fee, which is what registrars pay the registry, was $6.50 when GoDaddy's contract began in 2019. The ending's site counted 1.8 million .us names at the end of July 2026, which was about half a million fewer than a year before. At the old price, Murphy put the contract at roughly $11.7 million a year. The holder's arithmetic is ours: half a million fewer names in a year means about a fifth of the ending has gone. Murphy wrote that the new terms could put some registrants at risk. Before you renew a .us name, check that you meet the rule on who may hold one. Source: Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "As GoDaddy loses .us to Identity Digital, some domains may be at risk", 2026-10-05, https://domainincite.com/31934-as-godaddy-loses-us-to-identity-digital-some-domains-may-be-at-risk ## Apps, forms and browsers have rules too A newer ending also meets software that was written before the ending existed. WhatsApp did not turn a name into a link if the name's ending was delegated after roughly November 2015 (Domain Incite, 11 September 2023). The cause was apparently an Android library whose list of endings had not been updated since 24 November 2015. Typing www. in front of the name made the link work. WhatsApp on Android now made those names clickable, Domain Incite reported on 30 May 2024, citing the .tube registry. By our count, that was about eight and a half years after the cut-off. Apple devices had not caught up. Email forms are a second filter. In a study of 749 popular websites with email forms, 22% of the sites would not recognize addresses on endings longer than four characters (Domain Incite, 28 September 2017). Murphy noted that the paper did not mention testing .com addresses for comparison. Browsers are a third filter. After .sx launched, Chrome showed search results when someone typed a .sx name in the address bar, by Domain Incite's account of 3 September 2013. Murphy gave that as an example of how browsers tend to mishandle an ending that is missing from the Public Suffix List. Browsers read that list to know which endings exist. Some endings carry a rule of their own. A .app name needs a security certificate before it can be used, Domain Name Wire wrote on 3 January 2019. The reason is that .app is on the HSTS preload list, which makes browsers use encrypted connections. That makes .app names tricky to park, Allemann wrote, though some people found ways. ## What the ending's page shows and leaves out In Unique Domains, an ending's page reads the ending's public record. Registry status names the registry operator and its country, and a terminated contract when there is one. It also gives the day the ending entered the root zone, which is the master list of endings. Launch timeline lists the ending's phases, and In the news lists our stories that name the ending. What it costs lists each registrar's first-year price and renewal, with the renewal trap flag. On .us, the median renewal across the registrars we price is $7.50. On the website, Before you register adds a stored note where we hold one. The website's page is free for endings such as .us, .co, .eu and .me. Market > TLDs, on the Investor plan, covers every ending and adds a Watch on the prices of an ending we price. That Watch says what it sends today. We do not hold the registry's terms, its eligibility rules in full, its reserved and premium lists, its expired-name policy, or a warning of a policy change. Nothing we show flags an ending's policy risk. That reading is yours to do, at the registry and, for a gTLD, at ICANN. ## The rule Read an ending's rules as closely as its price before you hold names there: who may hold a name, what the registry reserves, what happens at expiry, and how a change is announced. The registry can change each of these after you buy, and no price list shows it. ## Before the twentieth name - Find out who runs the ending, and whether ICANN or a country sets its rules. - Read who may hold a name there, and what a holder must prove. - Check whether holding a name only to resell it is allowed. - Look for the registry's lists of reserved and premium names. - Read what happens to an expired name, and who may auction it. - Search the trade press for the ending's last year: a rule review, a hold, a new registry or a retirement. - Test a link on the ending in a messaging app, and an address on it in an email form. - Count the names you hold on one ending: they all depend on one registry. ## Ask the registry before you hold names Send this to the registry's support, or to your registrar's, before you hold names on an ending whose policy you have not read. > Hello, > > I am considering holding [number] names on [ending]. Could you point me to the current policy on: > > 1. Who may hold a name, and what a holder must show or verify. > > 2. Whether names may be held to resell them. > > 3. Which names the registry reserves or prices itself, and where that is published. > > 4. What happens to a name that expires without being renewed. > > 5. How and when holders are told of a policy change. > > Thank you, > > [your name] Keep the answer, with the date of the policy page it cites. ## Try it on an ending's page 1. Open the ending's page, on the website or in Market > TLDs. Under Registry status, write down the registry operator, its country and the day the ending entered the root zone. 2. Read Launch timeline and In the news, and look for a phase, a hold or a change of registry. On the website, also read Before you register, under Who uses this ending. 3. Under What it costs, write down the renewal at your registrar and any trap flag. Under What it sells for, write down the 12-month count and median. 4. Find the registry's registration policy on the registry's own site. Write down its answers to the script's five questions beside the page's facts. For any answer you cannot find, send the script. Do this in Unique Domains: Open TLDs. The public page: https://unique.domains/tld ## Sources - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "Public Suffix List to get monthly new gTLD updates", 2013-09-03, https://domainincite.com/14378-public-suffix-list-to-get-monthly-new-gtld-updates - Konstantinos Zournas, OnlineDomain, "ICM Registry Deletes The Domains ads.porn & ads.adult Because Of A “Mistake”", 2015-06-11, https://onlinedomain.com/2015/06/11/domain-extensions/new-gtlds/icm-registry-deletes-the-domains-ads-porn-ads-adult-because-of-a-mistake/ - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "New gTLDs still a crappy choice for email, study", 2017-09-28, https://domainincite.com/22176-new-gtlds-still-a-crappy-choice-for-email-study - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "Domainers could lose their names as .au loophole closes", 2018-06-14, https://domainincite.com/23089-domainers-could-lose-their-names-as-au-loophole-closes - Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Year in Review: .App domain names", 2019-01-03, https://domainnamewire.com/2019/01/03/year-in-review-app-domain-names/ - Konstantinos Zournas, OnlineDomain, "Last Brexit notice to .eu registrants and registrars", 2020-12-28, https://onlinedomain.com/2020/12/28/domain-name-news/last-brexit-notice-to-eu-registrants-and-registrars/ - Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Can registries change the pricing tiers of your premium domains?", 2022-07-26, https://domainnamewire.com/2022/07/26/can-registries-change-the-pricing-tiers-of-your-premium-domains/ - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "Identity Digital to release 5,000 reserved names", 2022-09-01, https://domainincite.com/28196-identity-digital-to-release-5000-reserved-names - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "Is this why WhatsApp hates some TLDs but not others?", 2023-09-11, https://domainincite.com/29054-is-this-why-whatsapp-hates-some-tlds-but-not-others - Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "ICANN places .desi with EBERO as it looks for successor", 2023-10-17, https://domainnamewire.com/2023/10/17/icann-places-desi-with-ebero-as-it-looks-for-successor/ - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "WhatsApp now linkifying new gTLDs, but…", 2024-05-30, https://domainincite.com/29924-whatsapp-now-linkifying-new-gtlds-but - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "Moment of truth as .music domains finally go on sale", 2024-10-01, https://domainincite.com/30373-moment-of-truth-as-music-domains-finally-go-on-sale - Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, ".IO domain names aren’t going away", 2024-10-09, https://domainnamewire.com/2024/10/09/io-domain-names-arent-going-away/ - Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "ICANN moves to retire Soviet-era .SU country domain name", 2025-03-11, https://domainnamewire.com/2025/03/11/icann-moves-to-retire-soviet-era-su-country-domain-name/ - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "“No timeline” to retire Soviet Union from the DNS", 2025-03-13, https://domainincite.com/30895-no-timeline-to-retire-soviet-union-from-the-dns - Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, ".Co domain registry nukes expired domain auctions", 2026-06-01, https://domainnamewire.com/2026/06/01/co-domain-registry-nukes-expired-domain-auctions/ - Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "Telegram’s t.me domain suspended, leading to outages [updated]", 2026-07-13, https://domainnamewire.com/2026/07/13/telegrams-t-me-domain-suspended-leading-to-outages/ - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "Domainer AI slop crackdown on the cards in Oz", 2026-09-08, https://domainincite.com/31918-domainer-ai-slop-crackdown-on-the-cards-in-oz - Kevin Murphy, Domain Incite, "As GoDaddy loses .us to Identity Digital, some domains may be at risk", 2026-10-05, https://domainincite.com/31934-as-godaddy-loses-us-to-identity-digital-some-domains-may-be-at-risk - Andrew Allemann, Domain Name Wire, "auDA plans to grandfather existing .com.au and .net.au registrants", 2026-10-21, https://domainnamewire.com/2026/10/21/auda-plans-to-grandfather-existing-com-au-and-net-au-registrants/ This course explains how the trade works. It is not legal or financial advice. ## Related pages - Read every domain ending’s facts and prices: https://unique.domains/tld - See how investors find names worth holding: https://unique.domains/solutions/investors - Read every domain word in plain English: https://unique.domains/glossary