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Comment by haribilalic | Hacker News Reader

It's not always as simple as registering a domain name on GoDaddy or a local registrar though.

To register a .com.au domain name, you're required to have an Australian Business Number (i.e. incorporate locally). It's easy to get one, but how many other international domain names do you want to register that require extra work?

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If you raise VC and you feel owning international TLDs is important, you get a good law firm to do the ones that you can't register yourself online. They will then contract out to local scriveners etc to do the local trademark/domain registration.

Honestly, if you've just raised millions in VC it is a giant waste of your time to navigate the ins and outs of regional corporate law. Pay a law firm, and get back to building your product.

General information: for someone who lives locally, it takes around 1.5 to 2 hours to register an ABN. (I did it.)

Some registrars specialize in this, SafeNames for example.

A company such as SafeNames is no guarantee though. They've been in trouble in Australia before for registering domain names on behalf of foreign entities that would not have been able to do so normally. In turn, any domains that weren't compliant were deleted.

http://www.auda.org.au/news-archive/auda-06122009/

I don't know about Australian registrars but I found a Japanese registrar that allows you to register a .jp domain (and other Japanese TLDs) without having a local business address/number there which would normally be required. I'm willing to bet other ones like this exist for other markets.

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