Trusted to bring networks together, beams NeuStar‘s corporate slogan. After my previous two posts, I’m still hoping that they can be trusted to keep networks together too.

NeuStar slogan
(Get the GIMP working file if you want to play with the slogan a bit. (I didn’t have a 2.3 version available with which I could have adjusted the letter-spacing of the subslogan. (Without the reduced letter-spacing, setting it in 14pt Arial looked ugly.)))

Here’s Andrea’s reply to my latest helpless message:

“.US Nexus” <nexus-compliance@neustar.us>
To: Rowan Rodrik van der Molen <rowan@bigsmoke.us>
Cc: “cctldhelp@godaddy.com” <cctldhelp@godaddy.com>
Date: Jul 23, 2007 9:46 PM
Subject: RE: {Registry#542-209} .US NEXUS COMPLIANCE BIGSMOKE.US

Rowan,

Please note the information below for Nexus category 3.

Nexus Category 3
A foreign entity or organization that has a bona fide presence in the United Stated of America or any of its possessions or territories.
Applicant must state country of citizenship
Applicant must also (1) regularly engage in lawful activities (sales of goods or services or other business, commercial or non-commercial including not-for-profit activities) in the United States; or (2) maintain an office or other property within the United States.

Though you are running a personal website which may have several visitors from the United States, this does not meet the Nexus requirements as stated above. Please provide documents that prove you meet the Nexus under category 3 as listed above.

Kind Regards
Andrea
.US Customer Support

O.k. So she knows the rules. I’m hoping she understands them too. 😐 It would be especially nice and good (and pleasant too) if she understands them so well that she can explain them to me, because, by now, I still haven’t grown any the wiser about what these requirement entail. I decided to ask her another time:

Dear Andrea,

That’s clear then. Is see I must regularly engage in lawful activities. Apparently, writing articles for Americans is not a lawful non-for-profit activity. I’m not quite sure what, then, besides selling goods or services, are other “lawful, commercial or non-commercial including not-for-profit activities.” Still, I hope my understanding of this phraseology is not completely off as that might mean that, indeed, I wouldn’t have qualified to purchase a .US domain. (Not that I think that this would make it a good idea to break a piece of the web by withdrawing my domain from me after having let me use it to build my American readership over the course of 2 years.)

Anyway, to keep my share of the web intact and to satisfy your rules (which I still don’t know how to interpret correctly), I could consider transferring my domain to one of my American relatives who may be kind enough to let me keep using the same subdomains for my websites so that I won’t have to break any links. Then I could change the category of the domain to C12 again. Is changing the Registrant of the domain acceptable? I’m sure one of my family members wouldn’t mind owning a domain to keep my piece of the web working for everyone.

Thank you once again for your time and patience,
Rowan