Hi Ceres,
Thanks for the comments and the opportunity to explain our positions.
With respect, I think the problem stems from the fact that your website is a little misleading. I don't see anything on the site that makes it clear that customers will be ordering a sub-domain only.
This is where we have a disagreement. All domains (except TLDs) around the world are technically "sub-domains". In the UK, people register domain.co.uk. That is a third-level (sub) domain and by Internet and all accepted technical standards, equal. The same practice is done in Brazil, Argentina, Australia, and many other countries around the world. In fact, even .com and .in registrations are technically sub domains (at the second-level) of the TLD, .com or .in.
SLDs like US.COM work exactly the same as Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .COM or .NET and are supported by all existing e-mail systems. In his testimony to congress on 2-8-2001, A. Michael Froomkin, an expert on the Internet, testified that, "there is no technical difference between the root file containing the information about TLDs and a second-level domain file."
To give a little background of how CentralNic came about...
CentralNic was started in 1995, trading then, under the name of Nomination. At that time, our former CEO, who owned an ISP in London, registered UK.COM for the company. He met Jon Postel at an Internet conference, who suggested that we allow people to register sub-domains on the UK.COM domain.
The idea was to compete with the impending rollout of the ccTld, .UK. Our CEO proceeded to do just that. We started a sub-domain registry in 1995 and began taking registrations like "WHATEVER.UK.COM". It worked, became quite accepted in the U.K. and the company grew.
In 2000 we changed our name to CentralNic, Ltd. and acquired the rights to several other short, country-specific, domain names such as US.COM, EU.COM, and DE.COM. The business has grown significantly. Our domains are sold at several ICANN Accredited Registrars including eNom, Dotster, Network Solutions, Register.com, and Name.com.
We are very careful not to "mislead", however we feel perfectly justified, after 15 years of uninterrupted service in having earned the right to call our domains, "domains", nothing less and nothing more.
P.S. I'm not trying to sell anything here, just hoping to explain what we are about and how we came to where we are today.