Euro bureaucrats tie up .eu in red tape to stop Brexit Brits snatching back their web domains European Union bureaucrats are turning their namesake .eu top-level domain into a red-tape nightmare. Back in May, the European Commission stunned the DNS community – including the company that runs the .eu registry, EURid – by announcing it would scrap 300,000 .eu domain names owned by UK residents due to the country's …
If you are (still) an EU citizen, contact the Commission *and* the MEPs of your choice (they don't have to be from your own country) and let them know what you think. It takes just as long as venting your anger here and is rather more useful.
I recommend reading the proposed amendments first if you have time, there are quite a few gems in there. Example (emphasis mine):
Where a domain name is considered by a court of a Member State to be defamatory, racist or contrary to public policy, it shall be blocked by the Registry upon notification of a court decision.
Contrary to public policy means that leave-polands-judiciary-alone.eu, welcome-refugees.eu, freedom-for-catalonia.eu, lgbt.eu are all liable to blocking as they are contrary to public policy in at least one EU country. This is a major WTF.
There are also a number of anti red tape laws in the EU that this amendment is trying to wipe its arse with.
Finally, it's just as good a registry policy to present .EU as the domain where everyone can express himself freely and securely no matter where they are in the world, as it is to present it as anything else, so why take the hard road?
Anyway, get writing.
The committee's home page, members, contact details, etc.: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/committees/en/itre/home.html
Typical European Commission thinking, they seem to think that anything even vaguely European needs to be regulated until the pips squeak. They have no idea how the real world operates; instead they operate in a cloud-cuckoo-land where the entire universe resolves around them.
Idiots!
"If someone wants a .de domain, it's because they are invested in reaching German internet users; likewise .uk and the United Kingdom."
As the last few posts have proved, the other reason for going with a particular TLD is coz it forms some sort of clever, or not so clever, word play. I sometimes wa.de through a bunch of these, looking for a cool domain name that wont make me go "y.uk".
> "Well our politicians are telling them that a majority of people in the UK want nothing more to do with them. That could, reasonably, be taken as a considered insult and they are responding."
So not wanting to be a part of the EU block can (reasonably) be considered an insult to the EU? Are they that sensitive?
Yup, my sentiments.
Euro bureaucrats tie up .eu in red tape to stop Brexit Brits snatching back their web domains
Is just the sort of frothing headline I've come to expect from trash rags like The Sun.
Maybe a mistake to give the article writing task to someone on the other side of the Planet, literally and figuratively.
The TLDs needs tidying up, too much cross use/misuse and overuse.
Well The Register has always adopted a tabloid type format so I suspect your attempt at a slight fails somewhat...
The problem with EURid's current stance is that it has never really reached that wide an audience after its initial land rush in the heady days when people thought multiple DNS names were important (http://research.domaintools.com/statistics/tld-counts/) - coming up with arbitrary rules about usage of their domains may provide them with the rude awakening that they're just not relevant outside of EU institutions. Other than brand protection to prevent malicious use of domains, there are few technical reasons for having an .eu registration as end users access sites largely via search engines rather than entering web addresses.
Which is all good and well until someone remembers that other TLD's tend to be self-financing rather than a poorly run, expensive, beauracratic DNS service for EU organisations.
"Anonymous rule maker Said" is exactly how the EU works.
It always amazes me how fuzzy thinking the remineralised are. They equate "Europe" with gutters and Tuscan reds so "European" must be a good thing.
Wake up the EU is not Europe it's a self serving out of control beurocracy.
It is strident about senseless rules for making suction less vacuum cleaners but happily goes along with the governments of Poland and Hungary sacking judges, suppressing free speech, and, implementing blatantly racist immigration controls contrary to the EUs own rules.
Most of Europe does not mind the EU as they take the money and ignore the senseless rules. Britain and Germany are the only countries that give the money and obey the rules.
> "happily goes along with the governments of Poland and Hungary sacking judges, suppressing free speech, and, implementing blatantly racist immigration controls contrary to the EUs own rules."
*cough*
EU parliament votes to punish Hungary over 'breaches' of core values
The European Parliament has voted to pursue unprecedented disciplinary action against Hungary over alleged breaches of the EU's core values.
Prime Minister Viktor Orban's government has been accused of attacks on the media, minorities, and the rule of law - charges which he denies.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-45498514
Just saw this:
"Conservatives had whipped their 19 MEPs to vote against the motion to censure Hungary, with only one defying the order."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45540540
Who did you say failed to stand up to Orban? Maybe you should look a little closer to home...
"Britain and Germany are the only countries that give the money and obey the rules".
Not true at all, eleven countries are net contributors. Ten can count, and know it's worth it. One is perhaps in the process of grasping it too.
Some simple googling could have prevented you from writing rubbish, then again perhaps not.
"Most of Europe does not mind the EU as they take the money and ignore the senseless rules. Britain and Germany are the only countries that give the money and obey the rules."
That is factually wrong. Germany is traditionally quite slow in implementing rules, and AFAIR NL, SE and even DK are net contributors and quite good at implementing.
There is no ban on vacuum cleaner suckness. How gullible do you have to be to believe that nonsense?
https://blogs.ec.europa.eu/ECintheUK/tidying-up-the-facts-on-eu-vacuum-cleaner-rules/
FYI the article author, and his editor who did the headlines, are anti-Brexit, but like all good journalists, that shouldn't stop them from pointing out where EU officials are being unhelpfully petty.
It is possible to be in favor of the four freedoms of the EU, and the importance of being within that union, while still critical of the bureaucracy.
C.
"safeguard Union values" best laugh this week, what values, milk members tax payers, edictators, budgets without oversight/ unverified accounts, punish anybody that doesn't do as they are told or think for themselves, ensure only the Germans and their French poodles economies flurish ... you can go on for hours ????
Must have missed the "El Reg now a division of the Daily Bile" memo.
Anyway yes there are too many civil servants in the EU and they produce a tonne of shite but as you lot have decided to flounce off the pitch it's not your problem anymore is it. You bunch of net curtain twitchers.
But only thanks to a clever trick. Most of the EU bureaucracy is done by people on someone else's payroll.
All the way from government to towns there's a ton of people whose sole purpose is interfacing with EU, providing shiploads of useless papers, implementing and overseeing petty regulations, ...
"Anyway yes there are too many civil servants in the EU"
If you look a little closer you'll find that this isn't a problem confined to the EU, nor to its consitituent countries. You'll also find that the same pattern keeps playing out repeatedly (lots of pen pushers of dubious utility coming up with rules and regulations to justify their continued employment, vs a dearth of actual staff needed to actually do things that matter, like cleaning the streets, keeping the lights on, protecting the environment and investigating/dealing with corruption)
Exactly. I voted Remain, and will continue to do so. The EU is an essential part of the future of the countries in the UK and the continent of Europe - and the world.
But I don't pretend it's perfect and infallible! This is just another example of the imperfections, which are best tackled from inside the organisation.
Unfortunately we tried, and failed at every turn
Anonymous because I still have a job and want to keep it for a while.
If you've never worked there, on the inside, it's hard to comprehend.
Its full of job justifiers, desparate to appear like they are doing something. Building little enclaves and empires, expanding remits, etc. It's like a large conglomerate or multinational, only 100x worse.
Plus all the paid lobbyists giving away free meals (star of restaurant and meal time defining how important you are), peddling influence in a huge circle jerk.
Then the factions and ideologies get in the way. Federalists are winning at the moment, brexit vote saw them slow down a bit, but the destination is fixed - the route, the vehicle, navigator and driver may change; but not the destination.
It can't be changed from the inside any more than it can be changed from the outside, it's a fairy tale. An appealing one, but not it's not real.
Things like this, and the copyright Directive (see also cookie law), and plenty of other things that go mostly unreported, all undermine citizens confidence (and rightly so). But you can't vote civil servants out, and they control the whole thing. Sir Humphry would be proud of how they adopted his world view.
For all the good things that happen, and plenty do, dealing with sh*t like this is a daily grind. It never goes away, you divert it, delay it, but it always comes back, and you only need to miss it once and it gets through.
You want to remain, OK, me too I'd be better off. But don't lie to yourself that things can be changed from the inside, they can't. The best you can hope for is too slow it down - and brexit has done more for that than years of playing the game ever has.
The future is the undiscovered country, and we will all live in interesting times.
Its full of job justifiers, desparate to appear like they are doing something. Building little enclaves and empires, expanding remits, etc. It's like a large conglomerate or multinational, only 100x worse.
Ah, of course, and we'll get rid of that entirely by relying solely on the UK only version of such people.
The only way you'd get rid of it is by bloody revolution, and even that would only temporarily clear the weeds, and likely leave a much worse infection in it's place.
Of course it could change.
We'd just need to remove or make the Commission democratically accountable to the European electorate directly.
There'd be no appetite for that from the individual governments though.
The heads of the individual countries could have sat down before the referendum and decided to hand everything over to the parliament or a larger commission voted directly by the people, not selected by some old boys secret handshake.
That would have knocked most the wind out of the Leave campaign.
This out of touch from the people attitude is a clear sign our democracies have gotten stuffy and unfit for purpose, no more so than in the UK with it's layered crust centuries of tradition which has served to insulate those in power. Sooner or later the crust will all that's left holding it up, and when that cracks, the results will be nasty.
Totally agree, having worked there myself. Noted though that most Commission staffers are hard working and effective, in several languages, except... that they are required to implement Treaties which everyone wishes they hadn't signed, or the French managed to make ambiguous. The real nonsense happens in the so-called 'EP', and in the not-even-EU 'ECHR'. I voted (at last!) against 'ever closer union', on page 1 of the most recent Treaty.
> I voted (at last!) against 'ever closer union', on page 1 of the most recent Treaty.
Indeed - it reads: "an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe,..."
A statement that sounds plausible, especially coming from the viewpoint of a history of inter-European warfare but a moment's thought reveals its failings.
The obvious economic problem is that by limiting itself to Europe, the signatories are saying that, African countries, for example, could never join the EU on equal terms. (And Brexiteers are called racist?) Perhaps, if countries such as Syria had been extended free trade access to European markets 30 years ago we wouldn't be bombing them now?
The second problem is that, historically, "an ever-closer union among the peoples of Europe" was once called The Holy Roman Empire. Re-inventing "Christendom" doesn't seem like a very good idea. But that kind of thinking is exactly why we are currently bombing Syria.
Some parts of the EU are great, some parts are detestable. Foreign policy to non-EU states is one of those detestable parts and needs to change. Brexit might just be the shock that causes that necessary re-evaluation.
'Its full of job justifiers, desparate to appear like they are doing something. Building little enclaves and empires, expanding remits, etc. It's like a large conglomerate or multinational' - so pretty much exactly like any civil service bureaucracy anywhere on the planet; worse than some and a lot better than others.
If this is a reflection of the nature of your discontent (and that of many other leavers) then the outcome of 'Brexit' is going to prove bitterly disappointing.
Its full of job justifiers, desparate to appear like they are doing something. Building little enclaves and empires, expanding remits, etc. It's like a large conglomerate or multinational, only 100x worse.Plus all the paid lobbyists giving away free meals (star of restaurant and meal time defining how important you are), peddling influence in a huge circle jerk.
How is the different to any other human endeavour that involves more than one person?
Self-serving, empire-building bureaucracies exist at all levels, national, state/provincial/county, city, district, town, school, social clubs, political parties, marriages, sports clubs, friend circles, business circles, companies, small-businesses, non-profits, NGOs, religious organisations. Everything.
It only ever seems bad when it's not your empire, not your group, that is in control.
Bureaucrats are the one group with true global equivalence and this doesn't help much either..
>>> the commission boasts that "the .eu TLD is the eighth largest country code TLD<<<
The EU as a country doesn't sit well with anyone who agrees with "British laws are what the Westminster parliament say they are" and I'll put good money on a large majority of the French taking the same position with their national assembly (and any of other 26 EU members for that matter).
The French won't be asked because they gave the 'wrong' answer when asked to ratify the EU constitution in 2005. (55% said Non!), this killed the constitution which was then brought back as the Lisbon treaty. European Treaties don't need national referendums to be enacted, just compliant national parliaments.
"In short, civil servants have decided to insert themselves into a dynamic market based on an ideological concept of how the internet works by adding unnecessary new rules over the objections of people actually working in that market.
It's exactly this sort of nonsense that drove many in the UK to vote for Brexit in the first place."
Nothing to do with the EU at all. Any petty bureaucrat with a tiny bit of power will want to wield it, and is very likely to decide that he/she obviously knows far more about some field than the people actually working in it despite having no experience of it whatever.
They will impose, or try to, a set of rules that seem obvious to them. Yet assume that these so obvious rules were never noticed by any of the people who have spent their careers in the field, and that any objections from those people are clearly wrong and should be overridden.
(And yes, I do have direct experience of this. 'Safety' rules that would have made an activity very much more dangerous.)
" Unsure how many .eu sites are actually essential"
I suspect that many might be "essential" under the tradeamar rules that say you can lose a trademark if you are not defending it ... i.r. if you can register mytrademark.eu but don't and someobe else does then they can claim you've relinquished your rights to mytrademark. If UK compananies are legally barred from regisering under .eu then they don't need to be bothered by it.
As for .eu domains ... can't say I've ever encountered one in real lide ... except perhaps leave.eu.
"Unsure how many .eu sites are actually essential but I'm surprised that many registered in the UK in the first place."
I spend quite a lot of time on the UK roads and it's that unusual to see .eu addresses on the backs of lorries. Oddly though, mainly British haulage. Other EU based haulage companies seem more likely to use the own national TLD.
"It's exactly this sort of nonsense that drove many in the UK to vote for Brexit in the first place."
Well, it is nonsense, and it is one more reason to despise the worst instincts of petty eurocrats who, in truth, would be of more value to the human race if ground to fertiliser and sprayed on cabbage fields in Thanet.
It is not, however, what "drove many in the UK to vote for Brexit". It's long since become pretty clear that the principal reason for a (tiny) majority¹ Leave vote was disillusionment, anger, despair and economic inequality brought on, ironically enough, by the actions of strong Remainer George Osborne and his epicene vacuity of a Remainer chum, David Cameron. Possibly no finer example of Buddies In Stupefyingly Imbecilic Incompetence has existed at the top of UK government since 1956—with an option on 2003, and perhaps 1938.
I'm following developments keenly as I have some .EU business domains. My registrar didn't ask for extra ID, proof of nationality, citizenship, residence or geographical base of business. But when we decided to go for server datacentre hosting with a Netherlands-based outfit, we had to provide quite a bit of said doco. They were surprisingly diligent, for people who wanted our money.
Fortunately I have access to a dual citizenship, which may make this fixable if the eurocrats do proceed with this bizarrely small-minded stupidity ... but it'll be interesting to see how this all turns out anyway, especially if folks start looking for workarounds.
¹ Or even more tellingly, a mere 37% of the eligible electorate.
² Because extant and pending UK law at the time, plus the malign influence of the US, virtually guaranteed untramelled and indefensible invasion of privacy. My view is that only idiots and scoundrels peddle the "If you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear" garbage—given that no UK "anti-terror" law has failed to be stretched, abused and exploited beyond its stated purpose before the ink had even dried on the statute book. Plus I am of the old-fashioned "Get a warrant" disposition. Recent findings show that we sceptics were right all along.
[Edited to add title]
If looking for a 'Rome office' to carry on EU related business, I've heard that the Netherlands has much more exciting requirements for setting up a company.
Such that it's easier for an East Anglian to set up a company with the EU27 in Dublin rather than (45minute flight away) Amsterdam.
"It's long since become pretty clear that the principal reason for a (tiny) majority¹ Leave vote"
Bearing in mind that the _real_ reason for the media blitz in favour of brexit was the impending introduction of tax laws which would effectively make tax havens illegal and badly affect the owners of said media, along with their chums:
It was one party's infighting that triggered it, one party's infighting that ended up with the results, one party's infighting which has made the last 18 months at Westminster look like an extended Keystone Kops screening and one party's infighting which is preventing anything meaningful being done in either direction (either making it an effective brexit or scrapping the whole deal as unworkable)
The legality of the referendum campaigns is about to go before the courts, with an argument that the entire thing be annulled due to the illegal activities of certain campaign groups. Which would put Cruella DeVille in an awkward position of having called article 50 without a mandate after all.
We live in interesting times and I suspect that if things carry on as they are now, cancelling brexit won't matter much as all the important industries will have already bailed out of the UK, along with an increasing number of skilled workers - 1970s style. How long will it take before you're restricted to carrying out a maximum of £50 when leaving the country?
How long before Poles and Romanians are complaining about the influx of British economic migrants taking their jobs? Think it won't happen? Look at migration stats when the UK economy was well and truely tanked, before the EEC lifted its arse out of a sling.
Bearing in mind the percentage of registrations that are
a) Spammy or
b) pointless duplications or
c) crime related or
d) cyber squat or otherwise bad faith
I'm not convinced this is a bad thing unless you run a domain registry...
the commission boasts that "the .eu TLD is the eighth largest country code TLD in the world with over 3.8 million registrations in 2017."
Errrr.... The EU is not one country so how can it be the largest country code?
Oh wait, the EU Comisars in Bruxelles want all the EU to become one single state with all power in Brussels and the commission. The EU Parliament is a mere thorn in their backside to their aim of a supra-national state.
Once upon a time we joined a trading block. somewhere it was ... oh why bovvver we are basically being kicked out for being the naughty child.
Oh wait, the EU Comisars in Bruxelles want all the EU to become one single state with all power in Brussels and the commission. The EU Parliament is a mere thorn in their backside to their aim of a supra-national state.
I doubt very much this was on purpose.
The EU, much like most of our governments was built broken from the start in order to ensure lack of true control by the people. Too many airpocket bubbles built in to safeguard the ability of those with money to influence.
You thought the individual governments would build direct will of the people into the EU? They hedged their bets, and put an unelected commission in to hamper things.
Out own governments fucked it up from the get-go. We should be leaving the Uk as well as the EU, cause it's as broken as the other, if not moreso.
And the whole Brexit fiasco has only gone to highlight just how broken the UK government is.
Deal or no deal - they can't decide in a unified way, which they truly want, and they won't have systems in place in time for either.
"Deal or no deal - they can't decide in a unified way, which they truly want"
This was always going to be the case. There could never be a deal that would keep a majority of the Government, Parliament or the Electorate (on both sides) happy. I feel that this is what the remain side are expecting to happen if there is a public vote on the resultant deal.
If you quantify the likely factions you have:
Those who want to remain in the EU.
Those who want to leave under any circumstance, and would sever ties tomorrow if they could.
Those who want to leave because of immigration, but want to keep the reminder of the EU advantages.
Those who are ambivalent about immigration, but want to get rid of some of the EU regulations.
Those who want to leave to enable the UK to trade better with the rest of the world.
Those who want to leave because the direction of the EU is towards a federal state, which they don't want (this is my position).
Now. take any combination of these, and see whether you can get a majority. Tricky, isn't it.
If there is a referendum on a deal, any deal, it will be voted down. This is why the PM will resist a further vote (even in parliament), because she will lose. The remain camp hope that this will mean that we will stay in! But it is more likely that we will leave on WTO rules, with the hardest of Brexits, and no transitional period.
The Government have an impossible task, which is why they cannot come to an agreement. It's not (all) their fault!
Very succinct.
Although I do think you've quantified the number of factions some.
Some of those below to the same group, and they are of different strengths.
It would really depend on a Parliamentary versus a another Referendum.
Honesty I'm not sure the end result would be any different, but the last was so poorly handled, both sides played far too fast and loose with the truth, one faction either committed a breach or was given poor advice (enough to void the whole enterprise I think), the question itself was vague and what the government has embarked upon is greater than the original scope (no mention of leaving the ECHR).
And finally, I have concerns that a proportion of the population used it as a punishment vote, and not on the intended topic, unaware the government was likely to run with it.
This is a serious move, with long lasting repercussions, I think the voting population should get an ultimate yeah or neah on the final plan at the end of the day.
We're not being kicked out, you plum. We were instrumental in creating all the daft rules, but the moment we didn't get our own way, we flounced out of our own accord.
I say 'we' with gritted teeth, because it's clear from comments like yours that I have about as much in common with some other people born in the same country as me as I do with a latex dildo.
" It's exactly this sort of nonsense that drove many in the UK to vote for Brexit in the first place. "
never has a truer word been typed.....
the re-moaners can cry all they like about the reasons why they think people voted, but its nonsense like this .eu pettiness and much worse that grind peoples gears.
"the re-moaners can cry all they like about the reasons why they think people voted, but its nonsense like this .eu pettiness and much worse that grind peoples gears."
Oh, FFS, it's what all civil servents do throughout the world. Did you never watch Yes [Prime] Ministers? Or is that before your time? If so, dig it out and watch it. It's an eye opener.
“Back in May, the European Commission stunned the DNS community – including the company that runs the .eu registry, EURid – by announcing it would scrap 300,000 .eu domain names owned by UK residents due to the country's planned exit from the union.”
Such actions on behalf of the European Commission are a punishment for GB deciding it wanted to run its own affairs and a deterrent to anyone else who is thinking of doing the same. The fact is the EU has already split into a two-tier system with a German-France alliance running it for their own benefit and the rest take the hindmost, effectively reduced to client states of the Greater-German .. er .. Europe. The treatment Greece has received since joining the EU being a typical example.
Alternate reading. With Brexit looming the EU is making sure all the issues related to UK business being disconnected from EU 'rights' are sorted out first. Bearing in mind a British company needs a EU27 based office to access certain features within the EU. eg a Europe wide medicine marketing authorisation can only be held by an EU-based company. So British pharma companies are setting up subsidiary companies in EU27 locations to transfer those licences too.
A long while ago I set up a .eu domain name for our company, I seem to recall having to prove EU legal presence at the time.
You are quite correct.
In a geopolitical context, the USA sees this split and is alarmed at this flexing of German strength especially with Germany making friendly overtures towards Russia (Ukraine & Nord Stream II as a couple of examples).
Conspiracy theorists would contend that Dieselgate, Hungsry's & Poland's ideological traumas with the EU, and Brexit are all part of an attempt to prevent the resurgence of Germany which has always considered Middel Europe as its fief (colony). Now it's German hegemony of Western Europe that needs to be completed: luckily for Merkel, Macron's doing it nicely. It makes you wonder whether some elections are "aided & abetted" to ensure an appropriate result.
One thing is clear, the .eu domain is a precurseur to far greater fireworks in the near future.
That the pettiness on both sides of the Brexit split is going to lead to another war on European soil within my lifetime?
Don't know, how old are you?
There's always another war on the horizon. On European soil, maybe, but not over pettiness over Brexit.
Looking for European Wars?
Balkans not so long ago, Moldova with its breakaway territory, likewise Ukraine [officially Europe streches to the Urals]. simmering Catalonia, Corsica. All of which have Russian encouragement or active participation.
Peace is a fragile thing and not necessarily to the advantage of the the great & powerful.
It doesn't matter anyway ...
From my work at last job*, I can tell you that there are a few counties that require a legal presence in them to register a domain name with their CC TLD. And there are agents who's specialty is having an office there and registering domain names for you. They'll just add .eu as one of those supported domains.
* We had a customer with a LOT of international domains, they were registering <co-name>.TLD in as many countries as possible as part of a global expansion. We also did some international phone numbers for them via VoIP so they could have "local" offices who would answer with the correct language for the country.
Oh no. Who would have imagined that if you leave a club then you have to give up all the benefits of being a member?
I'm not sure who's thicker - the people who think they should be allowed to maintain those benefits after Brexit, or the div in SF who thinks he's got the slightest handle on European politics...
By that same principle we should shut down the EU access to the Internet that travels through the UK and shut down the Euro clearing house in London.
Grown ups dont think that way though.
You dont need to be American to have a .com domain, and I wonder how many none EU residents like Americans will also be affected by this beyond people in the UK. What they are doing is petty and will kill the EU TLD not protect it.
"You dont need to be American to have a .com domain,"
That would be because .com is international. Americans have access to .us domains though, here's the 123-reg FAQ on who can register .us domains. Note how you must be a citizen of the US or have a business presence in the US.
That would be because .com is international. Americans have access to .us domains though, here's the 123-reg FAQ on who can register .us domains. Note how you must be a citizen of the US or have a business presence in the US.
And similar for .au domains:
https://www.domainregistration.com.au/infocentre/info-center-qd3.php
This decision over .eu doesn't seem to be particularly unique.
"Note how you must be a citizen of the US or have a business presence in the US."
A UK business can get a .us domain for it's site targeting US customers but cannot get a .eu domain for it's site targeting EU customers.
Not sure why your brought up the .us rules since they are much more liberal then the .eu rules and show how silly the .eu rules are.
Not sure why your brought up the .us rules since they are much more liberal then the .eu rules and show how silly the .eu rules are.
Because it shows that the principle of having citizenship/location/relevance requirements is not unique to just the new .eu domain rules.
It is a difference of degree, not kind. Whereas the article and many comments are implying if not outright saying that having any restrictions around location, citizenship etc. is malicious and aimed to 'punish' the UK.
>Who would have imagined that if you leave a club then you have to give up all the benefits of being a member?
I doubt many people care about it. What I find interesting is tagging on the "European values" element. This isn't about geography or jurisdiction, this is just the latest in ideological enforcement. Even if you are in France or Germany, if you don't exhibit "European values" it looks as though you can lose your domain.
Toe the ideological line or lose your internet presence no matter which email or web host you use. This goes far further an a twitter or facebook ban, this links political compliance and ideology with DNS. I wouldn't touch it with a Dutch barge-pole.
They've made .eu utterly toxic. I'd recommend ditching them as fast possible regardless of what country you're in.
By the accounts above, they are willing to ditch 10-20% of their revenue and increase costs to even their own people just to spite folk in the UK that likely mostly use .co.uk or .com domains already.
Thats the mindset of a 2yo spitting its dummy out and blairing its eyes out.
This us why we need hard brexit, and they can screw the divorce payment as that requires they act like adults.
I think the EU and the self elected morons in charge are done for not because of Brexit because of their own selfish and childish actions.
More than ever I am proud I voted Brexit.
@tallenglish
You may be proud you voted Brexit and be financially cushioned from its consequences, but I wonder how much the suicide rate will increase following the business failures, bankruptcies, broken marriages and sense of desperation that will inevitably occur after Brexit.
> It's exactly this sort of nonsense that drove many in the UK to vote for Brexit in the first place
Not exactly, but close. It's the sort of attitude that underlies it. The idea that *everything* can be improved with detailed legislation to ensure we all do it the way that the legislators think we should. Ideally such legislation should include trapdoors that'll permit more draconian versions without too much debate.
IMO many continental countries have a whitelist view, while in the UK it has been blacklist. One of the changes the EU has wrought is that, gradually, we've become accustomed to the whitelist view of things.
It's not just the hysterical language from a writer in San Francisco about the consequences of Britain telling its partners to f-off, but the deranged comments from some of its readers that make the most racist of UKIPpers look like intellectual giants.
This post has been deleted by its author
"Brexit, and the European Commission's aggressive response to it, "
The EU has been straight forward and consistent from the very beginning regarding what is possible and what is not.
The EU will not fall flat on its back confronted with ridiculous and unrealistic demands from a bunch of people who live in cuckoo land and believe in unicorns.
Should the EU some day decide to use Article 50 for the original purpose and kick out a member state that stopped behaving like a democratic country. Then perhaps some people might be able to claim the Commission to be aggressive.
The EU has shown an immense patience with a Government who doesn't know up from down and a bunch of idiots and clowns running around Europe huffing and puffing.
I believe more and more Brits have started to realize the whole idiocy was based on lies and dumb slogans.
The EU has been straight forward and consistent from the very beginning
Actually they haven't - there have been mixed messages. However, the underlying message has been clear - "as you have chosen the wrong option, you are going to be punished". Junker was very clear from the outset - he considers it quite proper to damage the EU as long as in doing so he can cause hurt to the UK. Partly as punishment for not following the "EU is great, more integration is great, Heil Junker" mantra, and partly pour discouragement les autres - knowing that if the UK leaves and "it turns out nicely" then there are other countries watching who might get the "wrong" idea.
It IS true that our side have been a bunch of incompetent [expletive censured], but the EU have most definitely been as described. Having watched things develop, it looks much to me that the EU side have (or at least some of those involved have) figured out that it'll hurt them a lot if we don't all sort things out properly rather than just crash out. But when describing our demands as pie in the sky, you have to remember what negotiation is - both sides come along with their lists of what they would like, and hopefully by reasoned discussion they can give and take until they reach a compromise that's acceptable to both.
"both sides come along their lists of what they would like".
No it's not like that, if you negotiate a trade deal with say Brazil you say what you want but you cannot force it. Negotiating with 27 countries who can all stop "your what you want" is even harder and the problem is not the EU but the red lines put up by May. But you are still negotiating so we shall see.
@ SImon Hobson "as you have chosen the wrong option, you are going to be punished". Let's have some examples of this, please.
Can you do better than the average Quitling and come up with something that's not
a) complaining about losing access to something that's only available to EU members
b) complaining about being asked to keep our promises
c) complaining that the EU is looking out for its own interests
d) complaining that the EU won't do your homework for you
"Given that English will no longer be an official language of the European Union after Brexit, "
Why wouldn't it be? The Irish also use English and they remain. Besides that, the Brexit will mean the end of the Union and Scotland will be back in asap. I strongly doubt Scottish will be added to the list of official languages though ;)
The official language of the EU is, as Herman Van Rompuy put it, bad English. And then there are all the translations. English has become the second or third language in Europe, mainly because of the USA. It will not change and is out of British control, of course, Brexit or no Brexit.
Scotland will be back in asap
That would need such a fudge and bending of the rules that even the most staunch pro-EU people would find it unpalatable - especially after having seen the effects of doing it for other countries that have joined (relatively) recently. There is absolutely no way that Scotland would qualify for membership.
... is appealing, for consideration. Imagine the fun we'd have if Nominet did this for .uk. Only British Citizens - all ye EU folk can lose your domains.
Are we big enough to NOT do this? I think so, as its commercially stupid, and nothing to do with who you are.
Just like the reciprocal guaranteeing of citizens rights? Trump went all evil on tariffs, and got a more or less immediate response. Should we threaten mucking with .uk in this way? I am quite certain the EU folk with .uk domains would lose considerably more than UK folk with .eu domains - I know I didn't bother grabbing any .eu, and certainly won't bother now.
It's lack of success makes it even less desirable even as a squatting preventor.
Sigh. This behaviour is a big contributor to why I voted leave. There is a lack of intellect and common sense in the political centre of the EU. Same lack here in the UK, but we're about to get rid of one lot, making the problem smaller.
"Imagine the fun we'd have if Nominet did this for .uk. Only British Citizens - all ye EU folk can lose your domains."
Officially that's exactly how they operate. Not sure how strictly they're enforcing their rules, but rules themselves are pretty clear.
https://www.nominet.uk/domains/about-domain-names/
Bah. Those pesky little facts tend to ruin a perfectly good wail. Again.
"Sigh. This behaviour is a big contributor to why I voted leave."
If that is your main motivator, then you probably have to vote to leave the UK too.
"an important and valuable building block for the European online identity"
You could just take the humane, neighborly view that there are a few hundred thousand UK residents who have .eu domains because they are currently citizens of the EU, and then grandfather those people. Even if you block future .eu applicants with your residency confirmation. I can assure the members of the Eurocracy that, Brexit or not, the British Isles are not going to break loose from their place on the European tectonic plate and somehow wander off into the ocean somewhere. You guys in Brussels will actually remain neighbors with the Brits one way or the other.
But no, someone in Brussels has got it into their head that people are just lining up in the streets to have a .eu domain, and that these people A) can be petifogged and hassled and they will keep coming back for more, and B) must be some kind of rabble-in-the-making that needs the firm, but wise, guiding hand of the European Commission before they go off and do crazy and socially depraved stuff like posting cat videos and Walking Dead episode reactions.
And presumably these busybodies then go on to wonder why something like Brexit could have ever happened.
The EU Commission is solely executing a 2012 decison of the ECJ which ruled:
All companies using the .eu TLD have to use them commercially for themselves AND MUST be located in a member state of the European Union. To follow this ruling, the EU Commissions issued a warning, that ALL British Companies have to give up this TLD or face the risk that their .eu domain is cancelled. On the continent we call this the principle of legality.
You Brits did it all to yourself. Who would have thought, there might be consequences.
You Brits did it all to yourself. Who would have thought, there might be consequences.
You realise that such a broad generalised swipe like that makes you just like the feeble minded Brexiters themselves?
For your information, I did not vote to leave, so please, what did I do to myself to get these domains taken off me? You can bet your life no brexitters had .eu domains, so you are only attacking those that wanted to remain.
Congratulations.
Don't they realise that the vast majority of British owned .eu domains are owned by remainers?
First, a bunch of idiots remove my supposed "EU citizenship" birthright, and now the EU beurocrats are going to take my .eu domains?
Can I claim reimbersement for the years in advance I've paid, and can I sue for other loses?
If it exists it must be regulated. This is the mantra of the EU commission.
For any and all of the benefits of an integrated economic and cultural zone, the over-regulation and bureaucratic-to-a-fault nature of the EU machine are the actual reason a lot of people did want to leave the EU.
With the lumbering great giant nature of the institution now it's basically incapable of doing anything meaningful and pretty much looks to things like this to justify it massive expense, leaving many people wondering how it can achieve anything other than to endlessly regulate things out of existence.
I can't remember ever landing on .eu site, enough said. Most registrations will be to protect a trade mark.
Presumably the eu will also cancel trademarks registered by UK companies as well.
Australia has a more reasonable approach if you have a trademark registered in Australia then you can have an Australian tld.
"Australia has a more reasonable approach if you have a trademark registered in Australia then you can have an Australian tld."
Been a while since I looked at the Aussie rules, but I think that only applies to .com.au, the other .au ones have different rules. Fairly sure you can't get trademark.gov.au for example, unless you are an actual government body. I seem to recall the Aussie authorities where contemplating opening up the rules a bit, so you could get trademark.au, but don't think that's possible right now. Someone will correct me if I'm wrong.
Fundamentally bureaucrats are small and narrow minded and cannot understand how things work outside their domains (pun intended).
Many years ago as RIPE meetings, mid-90s in Amsterdam, we (UK ISP people) had to repeatedly and loudly point out to the small minded academic bureaucrats that ran RIPE that in the UK anyone could start a business without registering with the town hall or some central department - which was important at the time because you couldn't apply for an AS or IP block (of the right type and size) without showing you were acting as either an individual (with extra checks) or trading as a business. They would not accept that individuals in the UK could just "trade as" as this was unheard of in their small world.
Sigh.
"If someone wants a .de domain, it's because they are invested in reaching German internet users; likewise .uk and the United Kingdom."
Back in the day when the internet TLD namespaces actually meant something, a .de domain would mean that the owner was a Germany-based enitity, as opposed to .com which would either be a global corporate or some other entity for which location didn't any particular meaning.
(I know the Americans think that ".com" meant a US website, but that's what .co.us was for)
Similarly, .com mean the entity was a company, .org a non-profit, .net an internet administrative entity such as an ISP, etc.
By about the mid-2000's, all of these conventions seem to be have been thrown out the window, so TLD suffixes have become more and more irrelevent. Case in point, the .word absurdity which pretty much destroyed the last of the credibility of TLDs.
Baggsy the ".foo" TLD when it becomes available please!
I'm seeing an increasing number of comments with the subject text within, and I can't help but wonder - how many are actually coming from UK IP addresses?
Yes, the .eu rules are a bit petty, but are not so different to what the UK requires with a .uk or France wants with a .fr. Some sort of connection to justify the use of the domain suffix.
So, if that's your good example of why you decided to ditch the entire EU...
...are Brits really that stupid, or are those messages coming from...elsewhere?
Brexiters are that bitter and stupid, yes!
Like the Trump voters, the more evidence of the inevitable car crash, the more they bury their heads in the sand.
But look at the other side. Those of us born EU citizens and glad of it have suddenly had this entitlement removed (I never knew you could be decitizened). And now, they want to take away established domains - owned mostly by those who favour being in the EU. Stop new registrations, sure, but removing entitlement to domains already owned is a dangerous and unnecessary precident.
Welcome to the world of divorcees. When someone tells you to foxtrot oscar, the warm feelings you had for them tend to evaporate.
Unfortunately, our joke leaders have never experienced it. Or are pretending it will be an "amicable" divorce. Or maybe they've just got such thick skins from all the (deserved) criticism they've received over the years (or they are in fact reptiles...).
The eu could charge for them to keep it, but use a forwarder instead. That way all their old links could be URL swapped to the new domain and presto, they could still charge and maintain their control over the .eu domains. Even just a rinetd or iptables would allow them to spy on all traffic through the ip forwarder.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
