.de restrictions - legal to get around this?

[hugegrowth]

I notice some registrars will be your 'contact' in Germany if you are outside Germany and want to register a .de domain

Is this legal? Anyone here live outside Germany and own .de names?

I'm interested in buying some but don't want to waste my time if this isn't legal.

[TogZip]

yes it is, but only if its a trustee service. you can also reg .de by some providers without a german admin-c adress, but it is possible, that you lost this domain because you violated the denic rules.

Tog

[KwelX]

just register them through GoDaddy or idotz.

in both cases they act as a registration proxy. anyone can own them through those registrars

[katherine]

To clarify yes anybody can register a .de names. The registrant location does not matter.
Denic registry only wants a local admin contact.
If you don't have one, some registrars may provide their own.
Check with the registrar before.
BTW same rule goes for .nl, .lu and others TLDs.

[hugegrowth]

yes it is, but only if its a trustee service. you can also reg .de by some providers without a german admin-c adress, but it is possible, that you lost this domain because you violated the denic rules.

Tog

I haven't registered any .de yet, just thinking of it.
Haven't 'lost' any names.

[domainstrike]

so I live in the US... I can legally register a .de through GoDaddy.com without any problems?

[KwelX]

yes

[hugegrowth]

I recently registered a .de through GoDaddy, just like any other domain registration. If you check the whois afterwards, you'll see godaddy puts in an admin contact for you, which is all the .de extension requires. You are still the owner though.

[sags]

GoDaddy and Network Solutions use the same person as a proxy in Germany. I own a few of them and there are some great keywords still available which make me think either 1) domain investors are unaware or 2) you can't transfer the domain and sell them. Probably the latter.

[hugegrowth]

I've seen lots of .de names get sold, I'd be very surprised if they can't be transferred. Are the 'great keywords' you mention German words or English words, because if they're English they might not be so great to use with a German country code domain extension.

[sags]

sedo.de is their .de website. On the first page of the most popular list they had the following at the time of this posting:

vote.de with 102 bids
wrestling.de with 70 bids
eshops.de with 68 bids
movies.de with 36 bids
notepad.de with 13
layouts.de with 36 bids
motocross.de with 1 bid

This is just a sampling of the many on their website. It is also of interest that almost every English word with .de as an extension is a German website.

So I think they are very popular but there are still some great keywords not used. For example, I recently regged:

cashadvance.de which gets approx. 1,000,000 searches a month from all search engines combined. What would cashadvance.com be worth?

Also regged:

oriole.de
warbler.de
meinkreditkarte.de (My credit card)
kreditklicken.de (credit click)
beerstein.de (What could me more German?)
carafe.de
asianflu.de
chickenflu.de
cupboards.de
fishingpole.de
prude.de

So far, these have generated very little in parking so I am going to develop mini sites for them and try to get search engine placement.

I also know that Network Solutions and GoDaddy will not transfer .de domain names. I am unsure how to transfer the domain names if they were sold. I think all of the sales listed are from German to German which is allowed by Denic.

[jemiee]

oriole.de
warbler.de
meinkreditkarte.de (My credit card)
kreditklicken.de (credit click)
beerstein.de (What could me more German?)
carafe.de
asianflu.de
chickenflu.de
cupboards.de
fishingpole.de
prude.de

you can't make any cent with this Domains , they are all "wertlos" worthless

all your Domains means nothing and i nether heard this words in my Life in this Country

There are 9 Million registered .de Domains , this Market is now empty for all german Keywords and the most accepted english Keywords

btw. wtf is a beerstein? :p