cav

I apologise if this has already been discussed, but with a potential Scottish independence referendum coming up, how will this impact on the future of the .uk extension if Scotland was to leave the UK?

It could lead over the next 10 to 20 years to the unification of the Irish counties and Wales considering its own independence. Effectively the UK would no longer exist.

Would the .uk extention be retained as it's accepted by the public?

Would ICANN create .en .sc and .wa to replace .uk?

Would we be offered the new extention equivalent in exchange for our .uk's?

Would our .uk's become worthless?

bensd

If that's 20 or more years away, will domains even exist as we know them today?

Edwin

Inertia is your friend. Millions of companies have collectively spent HUNDREDS of BILLIONS of pounds over the last 15 years "branding" their .co.uk names - they're not suddenly going to throw that away on a whim because a different extension comes along that nobody's heard of (a few articles in the media do not constitute "letting everyone know")

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Blossom

It's all very well to say that they want independence, but the only way they could protect themselves is by close alliances with England/Europe anyway. I believe there was an article published a few months ago about how Scotland is happy to take money and services from England and a lot of stuff is funded by their UK roots that they wouldn't be able to afford alone.

It would only take Northern Ireland rejoining the rest of Ireland to destroy the UK; England, Wales and Scotland forms 'Great Britain'.

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dta

the .uk brand is already established in peoples minds and lives so regardless of what happens, that won't be going anywhere soon in my view

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brum

gotta agree .co.uk is here to stay .... i can see i .eng at some point but most brands will just use .co.uk as the customers are mostly the same and they have spent so much building up that brand that they will wont stop using it they will probably use .scotland and.wales as well but .co.uk will stay rather than spending lots on rebranding all the .co.uk to .eng.

GreyWing

Scottish independence and leaving the UK are two different things, even the scots nationalists don't want to leave the UK. They still want the queen as head of state.

So wouldn't worry too much about it, no real scottish business is going to give up access to a market of 60m people to one of 5m

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linkr

UK domains are definitely here to stay, but in case of indepenence additional ccTLD would certainly be added.

Scotland wouldn't be the first country ever to declare independence, so you can learn from other similar cases.

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Ashton

I think the only thing that will happen is that when business's can't get the .co.uk / .com they want, they might opt for there regional extension. As well as a few local organisations / business's opting for it.

craigj

Personally, I think it would depend on the business.

I could see a lot of local small businesses and tourist websites going for a local extension.

However a lot of national businesses cover England & Scotland and devolution is unlikely to affect their .co.uk brand.