can you register and keep control of domain for someone else on a different continent?
 

would the registrars allow this? example, someone in USA registers a domain and keeps it in their godaddy account, but all the contact whois and registrant whois is set to their friend in Russia, is that ok with the registrars? so the USA person would have the ability to change and move the domain if they wanted, but the contact information for anyone to contact the domain would have to be sent to Russia

Yeah, that should be ok. Lots of web hosts, for example, will register domains for their clients.

shouldn't be a problem, but good luck straightening it out if registrar starts creating drama..

so if the Russian friend runs a site and pisses off a big american corporation that wants to try to sue him, they can fed-ex the legal documents to his address in St. Petersburg and they won't be able to bother the account holder in any way?

wouldn't it be 10x easier to just have the whole account in his name too?

the domain register just requires that you have legit contact information...it does not matter if it is someone else address as long as it is real.

When .asia domains 1st came out I used my wifes parents address in Japan to register domains...had no problems.