Domain Regulation changes

2024 proposed amendments of the .ee domain rules

The Estonian Internet Foundation (EIF) has prepared proposals for changing the .ee domain rules. The proposed amendments have been prepared in the light of the goals set in our 2022-2024 Strategy and the developments of the .ee registry services. The community has now the chance to give feedback on the proposals.

We would like to reduce the collection of data from .ee registrants. Therefore, we propose making the administrative contact for domains optional in certain situations. The administrative contact is the legal or authorized representative of the domain name registrant and they have the same rights as the domain registrant in domain name related actions. Hence, when registering a .ee domain name, it is reasonable to ask for an administrative contact only if the individual registrant is not the same person as the administrative contact. In the future, the administrative contact will remain mandatory if the domain name is registered by a child, a legal entity or a legal representative.

In addition, we want to make technical contact completely optional in the .ee registration process. However, the technical contact requirement still remains in the situation where the domain registrant wants to add, for example, a registrar as a contact. The change helps a knowledgeable domain user not to specify a technical contact that overlaps with an administrative contact. It is also a reasonable remedy in cases where a registrar is designated as a technical contact.

We are proposing a different requirement for nameserver records whereby we would further require that a domain has to be associated with one working nameserver in order to add it to a zone. In addition, the name server attached to the publicly available data network of the domain must be operational and usable in any case. The proposal is taking into account that the Domain Name System (DNS) and the domain name is working with at least one functional name server record. Therefore, we want to change the existing rules similar to the .se registry. However, the EIS stands by its official recommendation of two nameserver entries.

The third change relates to the personal identification of domain registrants. We would like to make the list of accepted services more flexible and therefore move them from the domain rules to the list of electronic personal identification tools accepted by the board. In addition, it has become known that the PayPal Verified solution used for foreign registrants is no longer relevant and does not offer a strong identification solution for the .ee registry. Therefore, it is necessary to find a suitable alternative - one of them is the eeID personal identification service created by EIF, which brings together both national and international authentication solutions. We are also open to other strong personal identification tools and ask registrants to let us know if they want to use them so that we can evaluate their suitability and add them to the list.

Proposals for the amendment of the Domain Regulation