Nominet backtracks on .uk domain expiration money grab, critics still fear sweetheart deal to come

Nominet has backtracked on a plan to give itself control of .uk's multi-million-pound domain-name-expiration market following an outcry by its members. “While a proportion of responses from a wide range of sectors including the drop–catching market supported [our suggested] approach, the prevailing view was this is not the …

[Anonymous Coward]

Go on Dominic, give .uk to someone else. I hear they are all remainers anyway.

Though please give it to JANET, not one of your cronies.

Mind you, thanks to you I'm no longer affected - I've deprecated all my .uk domains in anticipation of the Union breakup you, "Britain" (England) first, and the ERG have caused for our future.

[Adam Bradshaw]

Can we just have one discussion where this isn't brought up? I'm sick to the back teeth of it.

[Dan 55]

Just wait until next year, you'll miss feeling sick to the back teeth of it.

[heyrick]

I'm sick to the back teeth of it.

You may be, we all may be, but it isn't going away and it will be an important (fundamental) aspect to England's interaction with everything (including the other parts of the union) for many years to come.

It isn't going away. If anything, it's going to get worse (as if that were possible).

Perhaps the current idiots in Westminster are hoping that everybody will be very fed up with it all. It'll help them push through whatever clusterfuck "deal" benefits them and screws the likes of you and me...

[Pen-y-gors]

I've been using .wales/.cymru since they became available, or .com

I'm surprised no-one has though to launch .england yet. Given the time it takes to get a new tld set up, they should get started now. UK only has a few years to run.

[irg]

English TLDs

As ever regarding English identity/identification, regional identification tends be stronger than national at least . A .eng domain would only really come to fruition if there was a formal English Parliament or other England-specific legislature/governing body - but we'll save UK constitutional issues for another day.

I'd consider regional campaigns to have a higher chance of success - probably with Yorkshire and Cornwall towards the top of the list. Traditional County/Heptarchy identities might make sense for some places, but city names might be more popular where regional identity isn't so strong(Eg .brum/.birmingham over .westmidlands/.westmids).

[katrinab]

.wales / .cymru is managed by Nominet.

[Jamie Jones]

Arrgh! Really? Bugger!

[RegGuy1]

.england? -- naw

.ingerland, surely?

[Jamie Jones]

Yeah, like you, and maybe the original poster, I've moved all my .uk to .wales/cymru !

[Big_Boomer]

Not fit for purpose

Just by attempting this land-grab, the Nominet Board have shown themselves to be self serving and NOT FIT FOR PURPOSE. They will almost certainly now try another way to achieve the same goal, that goal being to line their pockets with gold. Not for Profit means just that. What is it with people these days. Is everyone a thieving scumbag these days?

[john.jones.name]

exactly Not fit for purpose

they have not benefited security

they have not benefited the domain holders

they have not benefited the networks (domain registrar is not a network)

they have benefited themselves.

I would love to see a well thought out legal challenge to their "oversight" I suspect that the legal dept has a greater payroll budget than their technical dept...

payroll say's everything

[Jason Bloomberg]

"Supposed to be a non-profit, public-benefit member-based organization"

Supposed to be. Clearly not.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Is everyone a thieving scumbag these days?

an interesting question, i.e. has "thieving scumbaggery" increased, or is it just more... visible, or less carefully hidden, because "fuck it"?

[heyrick]

Re: Is everyone a thieving scumbag these days?

Looking at what's going on in the news, from the likes of Cummings to Trump's increasingly crazy behaviour, I think we're very very far into "fuck it" territory.

[katrinab]

Re: Not fit for purpose

Of their £42,640,000 income in the year to March 2019, only £378,000 was tax exempt.

[Pascal Monett]

"it may again find itself under review by the [BIS]"

Given the result of the last review, I fear that that is not really an incentive for Nominet to Do The Right Thing, namely it's fucking job.

What would really stir the hornet's nest is if Nominet was found by a judge to actually be a for-profit organization, and forced to change its legal structure.

Looking forward to that, actually.

[Anonymous Coward]

a company that is supposed to be a non-profit, public-benefit member-based organization

Damn, we were THAT CLOSE! Were it not for the f... press vultures circling we would have made it! Have to wait now til dust settles and try a different angle next time...

[irg]

Lets go over this again...

Nominet can't be trusted. Nominet works for itself. Nominet should be deemed unfit for its job by B(E)IS, the CMA, Ofcom and any other related regulating/governing entities.

It should probably be absorbed into Jisc/JANET, but from a general governance perspective, a better management/ownership model needs to be found regardless. It either needs to be better deciding what it needs to be, and how it should spend its money(if it should). Its hoovers up money and pisses it away. Its a member-led organisation of sorts, but it should probably become an actual co-operative, where its staff, domain owners and other stakeholders can speak up, too.

As regard to domains themselves, obviously Nominet's market management has been nothing short of horrific. It created new capacity in the form of the "main ".uk tld, gave away domains fully knowing that most would expire unused, pumped up domains prices, and enabled the mass-buying of expired domains by shady buyers. Nominet shouldn't ever be about increasing the quantity of domains sold, it should be about increasing the number of domains put to good use. In the last few years, Nominet has done more than enough to persuade(or further motivate) many website operators to move to non-geo ot other non-UK domains.

They could do with merging .uk/.co.uk/.org.uk/.me.uk listings in the very least, to rescue this shit show.

[Dwarf]

The internet is not a toy

Given recent events in .,org and now .uk, it seems that the organisations that are supposed to be overseeing the administration of bits of the Internet are only interested in personal gain.

If this continues, then it wont be long before the Internet becomes an expensive commodity, rather than the huge enabler it has become.

So, perhaps the important bits need to be re-organised to prevent this sort of approach being used at any point in the future.

There also seems to be no point in creating more top level domains, if the process is just to lease them to the existing organisations that have the other similar sounding domains.

Opening things up will make it harder and less profitable for squatters and easier for others that need domains that are aligned to their company name / organisation . whatever other entity that makes sense to them.

[Panicnow]

As one of the Internet Pioneers

30 years ago, we killed the awful National Telecom data monopoly, now we have new monopolists controlling data.

The politicians get bought and the public sleep-walk.

I suppose achieving over 20 years of a competitive market was pretty good really.

... I'm going progressively off-grid myself

[Rol]

Once upon a time in boardroom land..

"He looks good"

"Who?"

"Russell Haworth"

"..but his background is in venture capital and acquisitions"

"and?"

"Well, we need a book-keeper to look after things, not a marketeer to sell them off"

"And where's the money in that?"

"What money? We're a not for profit organisation"

"Well after we've submitted our expenses, there won't be any profit"

[Dan 55]

"Business case"

“the decision to purchase this initial access to dropping domains – covering the first few minutes of availability – will be based on the business case for each registrar.”

This sounds like there's an extremely tailor-made solution for each registrar. Are business cases submitted in brown envelopes?

[Anonymous Coward]

F*** them all at N***net

Whether they be the board members or the member firms selling {*}.uk domains, large or small, I think they will no longer get any of my business (and if I can, I'll aim to influence some 500K + businesses to ditch having any {*}.uk (or .wales/.cymru) domain names).

I'd personally love to see their income below their salary costs so the fattest cats have to drop those salaries (after all, there's only so many of the actual workers who can be made redundant before the service fails).