if a non profit uses the .com domain or a for profit uses the .org domain , would that be false advertising and suable?
<p>Do organizations have to use domains according to their financial status and would they be liable for civil or criminal liability if they didn't use domains appropriate to their status (non profit/.org or for profit/.com). Also would using a website that has ad revenue or cookies on it automatically make one a customer or trader legally (the item traded being personal data)?</p>

<p>There is no law pertaining to top level domains, defining &quot;appropriateness&quot;. Instead, some organization is an administrator, and there is an understanding as to what the purpose of the domain is, but this is not legally enforceable. The TLDs com, org, net are open to anyone, whereas edu is limited in the US to accredited post-secondary institutions, however some non-educational commercial enterprises were grandfathered in. Insofar as registering a com-domain website does not entail &quot;an intent to make profit&quot; and registering an org-domain website does not entail &quot;an intent to not make a profit&quot;, there is no deception w.r.t. internet users. One would of course have to be truthful in registering the domain.</p>
<p><a href="https://thenew.org/" rel="noreferrer">Public Interest Registry</a>, the administrator for org, does not even purport that businesses registered under org should be &quot;nonprofit&quot;.</p>

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