Registering a .de website..

[yuppicide]

I am starting a new website. I am in the United States. If I register a website ending in .de does that mean my website might be slow? Isn't .de Germany or something like that?

I just want the name so I can do something creative like www.americanma.de -- that's not the website name I want to register just an example, but wow that's a good one. I'm surprised nobody owns it right now.

Should I go with a company such as register.com which charges $50 a year or just go with someone who I can get a lot cheaper? Do you know of some place cheaper I should go that is reliable?

I definitely won't ever use GoDaddy again for anything. I have 4 or 5 domains from them, but the hosting is on Yahoo! Small Business and all of the domains hosted with GoDaddy are extremely SLOOOOOW!

[bermuda]

If I am not mistaken, the country specific terms might need some physical evidences to prove local residency before the domain registration is complete.

So you might be in need of actually living in Germany for registering the de names.

[yuppicide]

That I don't think is correct. There is one website, I won't say which, but some company or lawfirm or something got the ISP to shut their website down. They were running a torrent tracker. Although the website had no files on it's website, just the tracker. So, they moved the website to another country to stay online.