Five Nominet emails yesterday - all ignored.
Looking at them it is easy to see how busy people could make the mistake of paying up after misreading the content.
Nominet is at it again: the .uk registry operator has emailed owners of .co.uk domain names to panic them into renewing .uk domains they never wanted in the first place. Despite being caught in June pushing for the renewal of domain names that were foisted on netizens, the company that oversees the UK’s top-level domain has …
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Well if Nominet is that incompetent and has to turn to what almost amounts to fraud in order to keep the lights on, then it may well be time for the government to take it out the back of the barn and shoot it.
I know that Nominet is supposed to be a non-profit but from what I can gather they have been taking that a bit too far. Still, I suppose that could be one metric that the board could use to justify their pay awards. "Look, we really are running as a non-profit organisation. Look at all the losses we have!"
When Nominet was first created it was a paragon of rectitude in an otherwise lawless landscape.
While its moral decline is regrettable, I can't help be amused that the current "business" regime have a licence to print money and yet can't make that work for them.
Classic case of their eyes being bigger than their stomach.
It was a licence to print money during the dot.com 1.0 bubble, but that popped just over 20 years ago. Normal people don't use domain names, they fire up Edge, use Bing to locate and download Google Chrome, then type the name of what they are looking for as a Google search query.
"When Nominet was first created it was a paragon of rectitude in an otherwise lawless landscape. ..."
I have some experience of dealing with Nominet.
At one time we used to say "Nominuts", but that epithet lost popularity as it gradually became clear that what we thought was incompetence was, in fact, just greed and malice in more or less equal measure.
... it gradually became clear that what we thought was incompetence was, in fact, just greed and malice in more or less equal measure.
Interesting, as this illustrates a clear case where Hanlon's Razor does not apply. I will have to spend some time phrasing Commswonk's Exception correctly. Something like If (a) the internet, and (b) money, are involved then skullduggery is more likely than fuckwittery. Might need a little work to make it more widely palatable.
There is a sliding scale of skulduggery, and Nominet is still only on a fairly low setting. They haven't (yet), for instance, tried to hawk ".bbc.uk" to News International for purposes of discrediting the other party.
Although that is an obvious next step. I wonder if it will happen?
"it may well be time for the government to take it out the back of the barn and shoot it."
Yes - and Nominet seems to have forgotten that it IS the UK government that owns .uk when push comes to shove in a court of law
Time for the DTI and or Competition and Markets authority to intervene?
Time for the DTI and or Competition and Markets authority to intervene?
It is probably moot, since I don't suppose the Government cares in the slightest about reforming Nominet, but the Department for Trade and Industry no longer exists.
They were replaced by the Department for Innovation, Universities and Skills, and the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform in 2007.
Don't feel bad - I don't think anyone else noticed either.
I noticed a part of this a few years ago. Instead of a few politicians with powerful departments there were many politicians with their own department, each with overlapping responsibilities. On the plus side, none of them can do anything without the agreement of at least three others. That might reduce the amount of damage any one of them can do. The down side is that each can try really hard to out-stupid the rest and when the train wreck hits the news there will be at least three others they can blame.
I noticed a part of this a few years ago. Instead of a few politicians with powerful departments there were many politicians with their own department, each with overlapping responsibilities.
Generally speaking, the Government likes having lots of ministerial departments. This is particularly true if they have a small parliamentary majority like the last few governments had. This is because each ministry needs some ministers. And each of those ministers gets a very respectable salary for the part-time job and other perks like civil servants to fawn over them, a nice office, a Government car with a driver etc.
What they do with all that is mostly irrelevant to the proceedings, because the great benefit is that someone in a ministerial billet is unlikely to rock the boat in any way, since they risk being sacked and losing all these things.
"Department for Trade and Industry no longer exists."
Which used to be known as the "Department of Timidity and Inaction" in Private Eye
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200506/cmhansrd/vo050519/debtext/50519-10.htm
Yes, all of us reading here are, shall we say, somewhat miffed that what used to be a reasonable and efficient domain authority has gradually turned into a rather murky quagmire that seems more interested in lining its own pockets, but we are only us, and not the wider population. Presumably hardly anyone else is really aware of this, which is why it can far too easily continue?
If The Register really wants to make a name for itself in campaigning journalism, why don't you prepare a dossier of the dodginess and present it to appropriate MPs who could be persuaded to take an interest?
(I realise that also requires finding non-dodgy MPs, but there are at least a few, thankfully.)
I won't be getting any emails from Nominet despite letting my .UK domain lapse. I recently updated several of my email addresses and went through my list of people/organisations to update. Discovered that the email address Nominet have for me is 15 years out of date! Apparently I can't update it either as my domains are held by 123-reg and it is up to them to update Nominet - a process that apparently is supposed to be automatic. Seems like someone has dropped the ball. Can't help wondering (.UK domain issue aside) if Nominet ever has any legitimate reason to try to contact me directly?
>Apparently I can't update it either as my domains are held by 123-reg and it is up to them to update Nominet - a process that apparently is supposed to be automatic.
No, the process isn't totally automatic, 123-reg as a result of GDPR don't automatically pass what could be PII data to Nominet. You need to call 123-Reg and ask them explicitly to remove the privacy flag from your 123-reg registration records to enable the automatic data exchange with Nominet, then wait a few hours.
Don't remember seeing it documented on 123-Reg website, but Nominet UK support told me what the problem was when I encountered it last year.
"123-reg as a result of GDPR don't automatically pass what could be PII data to Nominet."
As a result of yet another cock-eyed misinterpretation of the GDPR. Relying once again (erroneously) on consent as the lawful basis where legitimate interest (or quite possibly contractual necessity) would be entirely appropriate.
One day someone will actually read the GDPR before attempting to "comply" with it.
>As a result of yet another cock-eyed misinterpretation of the GDPR
Remember all the fuss about WhoIs determining what registrations were and weren't personal and the policies put out by Nominet about their hoovering up of PII that wasn't compliant with GDPR, so many ISPs simply withheld PII from Nominet...
@Andy Non
Do you know if removing the privacy flag is global though, i.e. so anyone can have access to my contact info or just Nominet?
No this flag only affects what gets sent to Nominet.
Obviously, once the new email address in 123-Reg has been around for a few hours, you'll then be able to create a new Nominet account using this email address and set up a few contact fields that aren't available via the 123-reg console.
Now I get it. Somehow this bottom-feeder with large amounts of cash saw fit to weasel his way into the Board and is now calling the shots as if he was running a capitalist enterprise.
How did his nomination get approved ? And by who ?
They have some explaining to do.
such as what proof said person had that anyone wanted anything other than ".co.uk", perhaps this person will be repaying all the money spent on the inept force feeding of ".*.uk" along with the cost of repairing the damage to the reputation of the registrar that their stupidity has done.
IMHO the board members that supported this have lost any credibility they might once have had and need to step down along with giving up any benefits such as pensions to repay the damage they have done
We don't only want .co.uk. For example, there are loads of .org.uk domains, because of a general impression that .co implies not just a company, but a commercial operation. Likewise, .ac.uk clearly and usefully identifies a very specific sector. Also, even if you'd like to see the government abolished at some point, for the time being .gov.uk mainly hosts legitimate scams.
there's nothing new about that, they must have taken a leaf from godaddy. I got such a ridiculous email several years ago, and I panicked for a moment. Next moment I was very, very angry, and this was my lightbulb moment (they're not a cuddly domain provider as they made me believe, lol). But I was still stupid enough and got involved in a pointless e-mail exchange with their support about this (it was those prehistoric times when you could email and get a response, even though it was already pointless). From then on, I treat them as they deserve, ignore their junk mails about "urgent action required! Domain about to expire!" and renew a day before expiry or so.
I have a .me.uk registered. Does this mean I should expect a begging/warning/threatening email from Nominet when they eventually realise that businesses don't care?
Back when I registered my domain .me.uk was actually more expensive than .co.uk and I could never decide if that was funny or stupid.
I am the admin of my company.co.uk address amongst a few others. I tried over the course of a month to get the .UK version with no success.
Contacting Nominet is an exercise in futility unless you want to pay for arbitration or God forbib appeal a decision. My pockets are not deep enough.
The whole TLD exercise has proven fruitless. Please just end new top-level .uk registrations, and only permit renewals.
Failing that, merge all the co,me&org .uk domain registries with the TLD, so that a single purchase buys&renews access to the four UK domains.
Either way, stop trying to sell us the same shit twice. There is practically no-one buying or using the TLD, and everyone was happy with the subdomain setup already
"Failing that, merge all the co,me&org .uk domain registries with the TLD, so that a single purchase buys&renews access to the four UK domains."
Sounds like a good move for the cybersquatting business. I have a geographically-based .org.uk address registered with no fuss. I have no interest at all in any of the others. The .co.uk is being squatted by someone who probably registered as many of the unclaimed contents as possible from a gazetteer and has been for some time. Anyone who wants that is going to have to come up with whatever he wants to charge.
merge all the co,me&org .uk domain registries with the TLD, so that a single purchase buys&renews access to the four UK domains
And what about all those where there are DIFFERENT organisations/people with the same name part ? I know someone with a .org.uk who could not get the .uk because it was reserved for the "owner" of the .co.uk domain - who never registered it. When the 5 year period expired, it got snapped up by a squatter.
So much for "holders of existing domains will get preferential access" promise made all those years ago. If I wrote what I thought, the post would be deleted for breaking the house rules on profanity. A pox on all their houses.
I personally own 6 domains - 2. .co.uk, 2 .org.uk and 2 .uk, but they were all registered for different purposes and they are spread variously across 4 different 'names'. I was also given the 2 .uk ones for the 2 .co.uk domains and had the subsequent shakedown emails in 2019, after which they have merrily expired, so, to my knowledge there won't be any more emails this time, though I wait to see.
Bucking the trend here but I prefer .UK over co.uk because 1) my sites are not commercial, and 2) its shorter/snappier.
I'm actually letting my .co.uk domains expire LOL (currently my co.uk's redirect to .uk), I wonder if I might regret that once the porn/cbd domain squatters take them over...
jira.domain.com
, now offers something.jira.domain.com