My registrar only requires that I have an EU mailing address, so for the handful of EU domains I maintain I have an astonishingly cheap PO box in Spain (I live in the US). Presumably, there's a trash can somewhere outside Barcelona that has a bunch of snailmail domain spam addressed to me.
Your registrar only verifies that you have an EU mailing address. You can absolutely lose your domains if they for some reason audit you and decide you are in breach if their terms
This is extremely unlikely - I wouldn't lose sleep over this. This will only happen when you're doing something controversial/illegal and your registrar is actively trying to legally get rid of you.
>This is extremely unlikely - I wouldn't lose sleep over this. This will only happen when you're doing something controversial/illegal and your registrar is actively trying to legally get rid of you.
But per the subject of the article I think it's worth taking very seriously from multiple angles. Domains are something a lot of people care about for a very long time, their entire lives, or the case of a business its whole existence as an entity. My oldest core domains hit their 25th anniversary this year. A lot can happen over the course of decades, including vast changes in what counts as "controversial/illegal". The winds of politics can and have shifted, repeatedly, a great deal, and technological advance has for better and very much for worse reduced a lot of gray area and informal aspects of law/culture that people depended on (though boosting others).
If one is counting on "audits are very expensive and thus receive significant political push back" it's worth reflecting on whether another 25 years of AI and a host of developments might change that. Could the subject of EU domain ownership at any point become a hot topic? Are there possible financial/social incentives that might push someone to make it a hot topic (absolutely!)? Etc etc, but I think part of the point of the article and certainly something I've come to consider more myself is it's worth taking a longer view more often when considering foundational stuff.
