Registrars have rules set by Registries (For example, Verisign is the registry for .com, .net). I would assume these rules go back to the original issuers of the domains.
Regardless, I think that any registrar would have to have some "we reserve the right to shut down your domains" clause given the number of botnets and other uncool stuff on the net which use lots of domains (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conficker#Payload_propagation for example)
Registries and ICANN do require registrars to include certain clauses in their contracts with end-users/registrants, but I'm not aware of any that include vague morality clauses. This document - http://www.opensrs.com/docs/contracts/exhibita.htm - is an enumeration of the terms and conditions that ICANN and the registries require us (Hover/Tucows) to include in our contract with our customers/registrants. These requirements aren't specific to us.
I was in the room in the late '90s when most of these clauses were negotiated and then again in the early '00's when the new registries came online (Afilias, Neulevel, etc.) and most of the new registries just simply absorbed the existing T&C's in order to smooth out the approval process associated with them launching their new TLDs. They've grown and evolved in the last ten years and aren't as uniform as they once were, but generally, you can still see the pattern in there.
Generally, most of the power a registrar requires to prevent the bad guys from doing bad things comes from national laws and not all these extra clauses. We (Hover/Tucows) find that all these extra conditions just make it harder for our customers to do business with us and so we've left out as much as we can and rely mostly on national laws to get what we need done.
Yes, thank you for your reasonable comment. I don't get why everyone gets all apocalyptic any time there's something even remotely "bad" sounding in any Internet company TOS. If we read the TOS of every site we ever visited we'd have an HN with nothing but submissions about how every website on the entire web is impinging on user rights. Let's focus less on all this minutia and get back to startups and code, please.
From a pricing perspective, I think your market might be limited in that companies needing security would probably purchase a separate solution and not use Dropbox.
But you might be able to get a revenue stream from prosumers / tech consumers. And your costs wouldn't be high since you ride on top of the dropbox service. And I could be wrong about the market of course. ;-)
Sorry to hear it Chad. I haven't used Notifo but followed your work, and saw you present a few months back at the real-time API meetup at Mulesoft's offices.
You seem like a sharp guy with tons of enthusiasm for what you have built (and will build in the future), so I am sure you will be successful here in SV.
On the single co-founder aspect - wow, I can't imagine. Aside from the moral support though, one thing you might want to consider is how a second cofounder could provide complementary/different skills from your own.
For example, partner with a business type person. Business models are hard, but lots of people have been through the experience of testing various pricing models, and could probably help you get closer to $$ faster.
