If you like and/or collect fine art, you probably already know about Art Basel in Miami. It’s considered the most prestigious annual art show in the United States, and there are many serious collectors and artists who head to Miami each December for Art Basel.
I am moderately into art, so I’ve been reading up a bit on Art Basel, and a new website called Art.sy has been mentioned in a few articles I’ve read. According to its home page, “Art.sy is a new way to discover art you’ll love, featuring work from leading galleries, museums and private collections around the world.” TechCrunch covered the company a year ago and just last month as well.
As you can see, Art.sy uses a ccTLD domain hack, with .SY being the ccTLD for Syria.
It does not appear that a company needs to be associated with Syria to own a .SY domain name, although it was difficult for me to find domain registrars to purchase a .SY domain name. According to Marcaria.com, the cost of registering a .SY domain name is $400/year.
It seems that the biggest stumbling blocks for .SY to follow in the footsteps of the popular .LY ccTLD are the cost and lack of ease in registering .SY domain names since few registrars seem to offer them. Should either of these stumbling blocks be removed, I suppose it could potentially become a popular domain hack.
Of course, political stability may present an issue, although the same could be said about Libya and people still buy .LY domain names irrespective of that. You can learn more about the .SY ccTLD here: Â http://tld.sy
I am sure you are wondering about the matching .com. Although the Whois information for Artsy.com is private, it does not appear that Art.sy owns Artsy.com, especially since it’s currently parked.
As you mentioned yourself the current political situation is a mess and i personally wouldn’t deal with this ccTLD.
If you register at the NIC directly a registration will cost you 59.92 USD each year. Ofcourse you have todo all the legwork yourself 😉
Question is what will the future bring for Syria ? Let’s hope it ends well for the people there.
@ theo
Even with the situation in Libya right now, the .LY domain names seem to be fine and operational.
I am not surprised it is hard to find a registrar for .sy since for USA and European companies it is illegal to make business with Syria.
I don’t know where Marcaria is based, they might be violating the embargo and the law by registering .sy domains.
There’s an additional hurdle with .sy, nobody would issue an SSL cert.