bigsmoke's Journal: Crackdown on my .US infiltration attempt?

Thursday, I was notified that my BigSmoke.US domain was selected for Nexus revalidation and confirmation. What this apparently means is that you're sent a mail through your domain registrar harassing you that you have 9 days left to prove that you have the right to use your dot-US domain. From the registration process (more than two years ago), I remember clearly being convinced, after reading the conditions, that I fitted the requirements for getting a dot-US domain.

The problem is: now I actually have to prove it. But this whole situation has made me wonder if I actually do have the right to own a .US domain. I've always assumed that writing in US English for a mostly American audience (most of my visitors are from the States) alone would make me fit the requirements. (My website being US-centric also means that losing my domain would mostly be inconveniencing to Americans; most of the links and most of the search results that get broken would be American.)

But, if serving US citizens isn't enough, take the fact that my dot-US as well as most of my other websites are hosted at a US hosting provider or that advertisements on my websites are served by a US company or that donations are processed by an US company. Come to think of it, I process most on-line payments using said payment processor.

So, what's your opinion? As a foreigner, am I or am I not entitled to have my Dot-US domain? And what can I tell NeuStar Inc. to convince them not to take my two dot-US websites off-line.

Personally, I think that even I weren't entitled to get the domain under the current conditions, they shouldn't be able to take it from me after I've been allowed to use it since March 2005. Also, no-one complained when I recently renewed my domain until March 2009. Now it would cost me an enormous amount of time and money if I had to change my websites to a new domain. I'd have to change my e-mail address for hundreds of website accounts and somehow try to convince thousands of page owners to change their links. This is simply not practical, so I'm crossing my fingers that NeuStar isn't out to break the web and to change cool URIs.