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Nominet announces new policy consultation for expiring .UK domains

Discussion in 'Nominet General Information' started by Acorn Newsbot, Jul 16, 2020.

  1. Nigel

    Nigel Well-Known Member

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    Nominet put themselves about as cyber security experts

    https://nominetcyber.com/

    yet can't run an efficient domain release system, can't verify genuine tagholders, and can't detect flaws that handed high value domains to savvy techy domain catchers over a prolonged period. Shows they're not fit to run the .uk namespace and should withdraw from the cyber security sector. That they should now try to profit from their incompetence is testament to the greed that drives this organisation. They look down on domainers, thinking they are a lower life, yet they've helped pay their salaries and bonuses, and kept the domain aftermarket going, even when they trashed and devalued the .co.uk market by introducing the .uk.
     
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  2. Domain Forum

    Acorn Domains Elite Member

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  3. davedevelopment

    davedevelopment Well-Known Member

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    I can't see there being any problems with auctions, apart from what to do with the money. Nominet should not have that money in my opinion and I'm starting to feel like this would be a lot easier if nominet was state owned.
     
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  4. WalkinDude United States

    WalkinDude Well-Known Member

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    Just joining in the banter and my overall opinion isn't that strong but way I see it:

    If you have the technical skills you will always earn as a domainer by trawling data at a greater rate than your rivals.

    If you have loads of dosh you will always earn as domainer on aftermarket Auction sites, private sales etc.

    So why not make dropcatching a lottery so there's an entry point for ordinary people?

    I'm aware this isn't going to happen because 3 broard avenues have already been decided but fact a lottery was ruled out means it's a closed-loop solution. It is in fact domainers and nominet colluding towards a solution. General public aren't getting a look in.
     
  5. Derek Portugal

    Derek Active Member

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    I think a lottery was immediately discarded as there is no viable way at all to stop people cheating.
     
  6. dee

    dee Well-Known Member Acorn Supporter

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    Surely you just make it so it's not worth their while ? So... some method of non refundable entry per lottery. Effectively a ticket ( which someone mentioned makes it gambling , which is a valid point, but maybe a way round it) So if someone has 100 accounts, they have to pay 100 entry points per lottery.
     
  7. ian

    ian Well-Known Member

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    I believe they intend to leave the DAC in place for those needing it, but to avoid it being used to assist in catching, would be allocated the delayed DAC only, so 100ms delay (perhaps they will increase the delay). For any domains not marked for auction (I assume through expressions of interest), they would drop and be available to register via EPP creates which again I assume means specifically announced timestamps.

    Speaking broadly, you have 3 tiers of 'domain investor/operator'. Tier 1 drop catchers, those who register domains for reg fee and then hold or flip (added this word in just for you Colin), Tier 2 buyers, those who don't necessarily catch domains, but buy from those that do (the reseller market), and Tier 3, those who buy as end-users, or investors buying to develop. Nominet's proposal will wipe out Tier 1 which isn't profitable to them, and make more money from Tier 2 and 3.
     
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  8. Derek Portugal

    Derek Active Member

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    But there is no middle ground. Either a ticket to win a £40,000 domain is value for money, or it's not. If it is I will buy 100's of them. If its not I won't buy any.

    I don't see how you can't discourage cheaters from buying a lot of entries (whether its tickets, accounts or any other way you slice it) without also discouraging genuine 1 off participants.

    But lets play it out and see if it works. You tell me in theory how you'd do it, and I'll tell you how I'd cheat.
     
  9. dee

    dee Well-Known Member Acorn Supporter

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    mmm....okay. Off the top of my head.

    1- Domain goes through usual drop cycle and is not renewed (to the point that would normally drop)
    2 - Enters a grace period of say 1 week where people can express interest on Nominet approved / run auction site.
    3 - If no one bids / buys ticket the domain drops at end of week as normal and can be reg'd at usual fee
    4 - During week , people can buy entry ticket .... as many as you like at set fee per entry ...so effectively a raffle.
    5 - At set time , random entry is drawn and domain allocated. No payment made at this point as entry fee was ticket price. As many as you like. If two people buy a ticket you have a fifty fifty shot etc.

    Points to note.... number of tickets sold publicly visible as they are sold. So if its a decent domain at £10 per entry and there have been 1000 sold, you know your chances are 1 in 1001 if you buy a ticket. If someone really wants it they can blow 10 grand on tickets. It can still be won by someone who only buys one. Thats the luck element.

    It becomes slightly self levelling in that theres always the chance a one ticket buyer can win. If an auction it just becomes biggest wallet wins.
     
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  10. Derek Portugal

    Derek Active Member

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    Okay so lets use an extreme example. Helptobuy.org.uk, £40,000 domain

    If there is normally 100 people entering these raffles it would be financially prudent for me to enter the draw 900 times.

    I'll pay £9k to have a 90% chance of winning a £40k domain.

    If you use a domain at the other extreme, one which will struggle to make £50 on Domainlore. I think at that point it won't be worth anyone entering at all.


    I don't believe you can make this auction both enticing to enter, and cheat proof.
     
  11. dee

    dee Well-Known Member Acorn Supporter

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    But surely it wont normally be 100 people entering unless its a pretty decent domain. Your average 50 quid domainlore domain is not suddenly going to get 100 people bidding at a tenner a pop when they know you wont get your tenner back and theres a 1/100 chance of getting it.

    Helptobuy.org.uk was a specific link domain with a decent profile and potential for diverting traffic. That in itself makes it a niche audience, and there were obviously some people in that niche that thought 40k is a drop in the ocean compared to potential earnings ( whatever your moral standpoint on that domain)

    Would that person have dropped 30k on entries if there where already 1000 single entries ? Knowing that they would lose 30k and someone who'd spent 10 quid could win it ? I doubt it..... but then maybe they'll say different if they read this.
     
  12. Derek Portugal

    Derek Active Member

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    How many will it be? Can we have a specific number for talking sake please.

    Its either going to be worth me cheating, or its not going to be worth any legitimate people entering at all. This method is entirely bust before it even starts.
     
  13. Derek Portugal

    Derek Active Member

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    If anyone thinks Helptobuy is too much of an outlying example lets use Bars.co.uk. Currently on auction at £2,050.
     
  14. dee

    dee Well-Known Member Acorn Supporter

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    I thought the whole point was to stop cheating from Nominets standpoint ? At least with a well run lottery at one price per entry it takes any collusion or technical advantage out of it ?

    I disagree on the legitimate people angle. It'll just end up with people watching bids the same as ebay except you cant snipe...only buy tickets.

    EDIT. The number of people will depend on the domain and who wants it. However if if lets say pizza.co.uk drops (lol...yeah right) then obviously its going to get a lot more interest than croydenpizza.co.uk . But if your in croyden and own a pizza shop then may be worth 2 or three tickets. Difference is..... i could potentially get pizza.co.uk for. tenner
     
  15. Derek Portugal

    Derek Active Member

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    If you want a lottery system then yes, ending cheating needs to be the main aim or the entire system fails.

    Are you going to legitimately allow me to buy 99 tickets while you buy one?

    If yes then we may as well end the pretence of a lottery, call it an auction and let me bid 99 x lottery ticket price.
     
  16. dee

    dee Well-Known Member Acorn Supporter

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    But its not an auction.... its a raffle/lottery. It means im still in with a chance. I will legitimately allow you to buy 99 tickets and ill buy one as that my budget. At least i still have a chance, and you have to balance your potential loss with banging 990 quid and i still get it for a tenner

    EDIT. I'll also say... i 100% dont want it to change at all as i currently make some money. I'm bottom rung in terms of catching and use a rented catch script, but im learning what to go for and what actually sells. There are guys here that are VERY good at what they do and make amazing money im sure. Fair game to them.
     
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    Last edited: Jul 23, 2020
  17. Derek Portugal

    Derek Active Member

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    But I will play the odds and financially outmuscle you when it makes sense. When it doesn't, I won't.

    I think you'd be better letting me buy the domain for 99x entry fee and you go to your local newsagent with your 1x fee and buy a scratch card.

    What you're proposing is effectively gambling, not investing and not real business. There is no chance whatsoever of Nominet doing this. For a start they legally can't, it breaches gambling laws.
     
  18. dee

    dee Well-Known Member Acorn Supporter

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    Possibly, and i did mention the gambling angle early on ( as someone else had pointed it out)

    You can potentially try and bully me out, but can you do that with every decent domain ? It would only take a couple where you get the 'one in a thousand' at a tenner and your screwed. I think it might make people actually think about what they want as opposed to sitting on hundreds of domains (which im guilty of)
     
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  19. Derek Portugal

    Derek Active Member

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    I think I could bully you out financially yes, based on estimates of how many would enter / what my chances of winning would be.

    Either way its a moot point because you can't charge an entry fee for a £5000+ domain and run it as a raffle.

    The only way you could run a raffle would be for it to be entirely free to enter. And then I will enter 100's or 1000's of times and you'll be bullied more than a red headed step child.
     
  20. deleted7/10/23 United Kingdom

    deleted7/10/23 Banned

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    I think they just added more cars, diamond encrusted everything and are printing themselves unlimited ride-again tickets, so probably not even slowing down let alone getting derailled ;)

    And this is why board members really should be attending member-y things like the key partners meetings/registrar days - then they'd know more about the presentation-of and responses-relating-to some of the promotions and how many were planning to use them :p

    This was *not* an unknown/unexpected outcome of the promo.
    This was "outside of the spirit" if not necessarily the exact wording (the phrase "allowing you to offer it for free to the registrant" was very specifically talked about), but as we didn't sign up for it I did not go through what got published

    In fact a question was asked about the voting rights impact relating to something you dont _pay_ for - I was the one who asked it !

    So it was very much "expected" by many even if, as you claim, it came as a shock to some

    Then of course once it became "common knowledge" of how it was getting how much of a cascade of "they've done it so we have to" came into effect ?

    And from my understanding of talking to some larger members, more than 1 followed up with "can you run it again/a special for us so we can do it" occurred !

    Afterall, suddenly adding millions of DuM was going to play havoc with the relative %age representation at the voting stages

    And whilst the composition of the board may not have had a GD staff member at the table (and for absolute clarity, I am NOT suggesting the promo involved anything of impropriety ) in years past there had been an amount of "how would it affect X" influence over policy due to the size of 123-reg, "Oli-gate" wasn't exactly forgotten and Mr Hope was involved in the "selling of the promo" to registrars - so you should be able to understand why people may have assumed something underhand was going on.

    That is exactly what Directors in the real-world actually spend time doing
    - I don't anticipate a submarine falling from the sky into my office coffee machine, but it's damn well been planned around :)
     
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  21. Siusaidh

    Siusaidh Well-Known Member

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    That comment is total win, Rob.

    And even if they did not foresee it happening in October 2017 with Namesco and 123-Reg (which I find totally unbelievable with regard to the Executive), when they re-ran the promo in June 2019, that was completely "eyes open" - they'd seen what had happened in October 2017, and they didn't think it would happen again in June 2019?! That's complete nonsense.

    This was blatant facilitation of mass-registrations that they knew were almost certainly going to happen.

    When the agreed and promised 5 years were up, and the unclaimed .uk domains became available, 2,800,000 domains were not released because they'd been mass-registered without the request of the registrants themselves - totally contrary in my view to several RRA clauses (specifically Clause 3.2 and 3.2.3, and also 3.2.6, 2.8 and 2.8.1).

    What part of "You must not request a transaction if the Registrant you identify to us in the transaction has not instructed or requested you to act on its behalf" do they not understand?

    They were registering domains that the original registrants just didn't want and hadn't requested. By the end of September 2020 .uk will have haemorrhaged 2,300,000 domains from .uk's peak. The policy of 'laissez-faire' by Nominet (to boost registrations and just let those companies police themselves) brought disrepute but achieved almost nothing.

    I cannot escape the personal view that what occurred here was really poor judgment. The free registrations helped these large companies as they went ahead with the circumvention of RRA rules, and then the Executive sat back and watched.

    The registration figures tell their own story:

    For 14 months prior to the first promotion, .uk registrations were flat-lining in the 600,000s.

    Then suddenly, October 2017: they shot up to 2,119,904 registrations in a matter of weeks.

    Then more or less a plateau for 20 months at that level in the lower 2 millions (the vast majority mass-registered by Namesco and 123Reg).

    Then suddenly, June 2019: it shot up to 3,606,697 registrations.

    About 2,800,000 mass-registered domains were unavailable in the agreed release at the end of the 5 years which was a clear undertaking to the public. It was the agreed process, which Namesco, 123Reg, Fasthosts and 1&1 effectively hijacked.

    Only about 80,000 names were actually registered in the ROR and its immediate aftermath.

    I think this demonstrates the scale of the disruption of process, both of the 5-year undertaking, and of a fair system of voting rights. I do not believe the Executive was taken by surprise in October 2017. I feel sure neither the Executive nor the Board could expect Fasthosts/1&1 not to score through the open goal in the repeated promotion in June 2019. They'd seen what happened before. They could not be 'taken by surprise' the second time. The free registrations facilitated the name grab.
     
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    Last edited: Jul 23, 2020