.UK overlord Nominet tells everyone not to worry about 'distorted' vote allocations in its board elections

Nominet has been forced to admit it wrongly calculated election results for its board of directors in 2018 and 2019. The operator of the .UK domain-name registry insists, however, the errors wouldn’t have had any impact on the actual results, and it will proceed as normal with this year’s elections, due next week. The news was …

[cipnt]

Nominet has lost its way

Fire the incompetent Russell Haworth (CEO), give fair voting rights to members, reelect a new board, divest from all those crappy cybersecurity and radio spectrum ventures, and make Nominet what is was set up to be – the uk registry, and nothing more

[Paul Herber]

Re: Nominet has lost its way

I see he went to the Kellogg School of Management. Does this make him a serial entrepreneur?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nominet has lost its way

> entrepreneur

> a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit

He only takes other peoples hard work claiming credit only for the wins.

He doesn't take on financial risks.

He only takes profits.

So funny, but reality is not.

[RM Myers]

Re: Nominet has lost its way

At least he is not a serial cereal entrepreneur! By the way, your comment was quite funny punny.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Nominet has lost its way

Could explain why Nominet's private ventures have been a bit flakey?

[David 132]

Re: Nominet has lost its way

That was a fine Dad joke.

Now get back to your cocoa, Pops.

[Andy The Hat]

logic is optional

"There are also two voting caps in an effort to make voting more equitable: no one member can cast more votes than three per cent of the total votes cast in board elections, and 10 per cent when it comes to voting on other business. And there is preferential voting in which candidates for board seats are knocked out in different voting rounds."

It's easy and obviously based on the equally easy

"will those of you who are playing in the match this afternoon move your clothes down onto the lower peg immediately after lunch, before you write your letter home, if you're not getting your hair cut, unless you've got a younger brother who is going out this weekend as the guest of another boy, in which case, collect his note before lunch, put it in your letter after you've had your hair cut, and make sure he moves your clothes down onto the lower peg for you."

[wolfetone]

Have Nominet become a Politburo?

[damo2929]

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest.

Nominet's board just has to be fired as it's all about lining its pockets and ensures it's safe and protected.

Bring in people that are competent that know the importance of it's role, publish the board notes, and become a transparent not for profit company it was originally founded.

The deadwood management needs a spine to question the board's morality and just let it happen time and time again.

[katrinab]

GoDaddy Inc isn't just godaddy.com. There are loads of other hosting providers that are ultimately owned by them. Do they each get their own 3% limit?

[Anonymous Coward]

No. They're supposed to tell Nominet when there is a conflict and the voting rights are combined. It's usually left to members to inform Nominet. Nominet refuses to punish registrars who do this, because they know who feeds them.

[Mike 137]

The regulator no longer exists except in name.

"The reality is that the top three registrars, armed with their board seats, have an effective veto over the organisation’s decisions."

What we're left with is essentially just a cartel masquerading as a regulator.

[Maelstorm]

And I thought ICANN was bad. So let's see here...we have apparent fraud, conflict of interest, and now a cover up. All we need now is a murder to put internet governance on the same level as a political conspiracy...wait, it already is.

[NeilPost]

All we need now is some shady involvement from Ethos Capital.

[doublelayer]

Something finally explained

There have been many stories about the roll-out of second-level .uk domains in the past few years, mostly about how registrars kept adding them then attempting to charge for them. That made some sense if that was the registrar's plan, but it always struck me as a little shortsighted because there was obviously going to be a user backlash which would cost the registrars in settlement and reversing the payments. Until now, I was willing to accept that registrars just aren't very smart and took the risk anyway. Now, things are a little clearer:

"But things get even more complicated than that: the number of members varies from year to year; many members fail to vote; the votes are calculated according to Nominet’s financial records based on paid-for domains – except for when Nominet made an exception for millions of domains it gave away for free as part of the controversial launch of second-level .uk domains."

Any registrar who handed out free .uk domains without asking did that to get extra votes. If anyone's still using a registrar that did this, I suggest you immediately cancel your business with them.

[cipnt]

Re: Something finally explained

That could very well be the case, but there is that 3% voting rights cap which these big registrars would likely fall under