Direct.uk is ongoing.....

[retired_member34]

The exception would be if books.org.nz was also registered before their cutoff date, in which case there would need to be AGREEMENT between the competing owners as to who got books.nz (assuming each domain owner put in the request). No auction, just agreement.

But just how many owners of the the .org.nz would agree to giving the .nz to the .co.nz? End users of domains might be in agreement on this if the two are developed, but portfolio holders would not, as the .org.nz holder has the most to gain.

 

[foz]

It's still a money grabbing proposal benefiting the Registry and Registrar(s). Who the hell wants to double up on their ccTLD domain for the sake of ".co". Most will apply to "protect" their position, so it won't add a new layer of owners to the landscape.

 

[Stephen]

.nz

Round two in .nz announced.

http://dnc.org.nz/second_level_proposal_c2

Thanks for posting this.

It appears to be a much better base idea to launch a full discussion than .uk proposal was.

In that at least .nz have considered the real world and although I don't agree with the proposal as is, hopefully they can build in further changes in direction during the consultation.

 

[Edwin]

It's still a money grabbing proposal benefiting the Registry and Registrar(s). Who the hell wants to double up on their ccTLD domain for the sake of ".co". Most will apply to "protect" their position, so it won't add a new layer of owners to the landscape.

I agree, it's not perfect.

However, it's probably close to the best you can get if you start off with the premise that it WILL be created.

In other words, .nz isn't needed (I agree with your comment above) but IF it is implemented anyway then the revised proposal is pretty much the best way to go about it.

 

[Lucien Taylor]

Look at the current Nominet board - a Chair from academia and public service; a CEO who has worked for over 10 years inside Nominet; a Chief Operating Officer who doesn’t seem to have any working experience outside Nominet; two registrars with big domain businesses; a Non-Executive who works mainly for Nominet and the Nominet Trust; a small business entrepreneur; two professional Non-Executives from the banking and public sectors; and a CTO who replaced the Finance Director just as growth rates were starting to plummet

… and not one engager or communicator!

The ccTLD market is sloping down, and 1900 new gTLDs are coming onto the market. Businesses are gearing up to rebrand and direct.uk is looking on the face of it like an attractive proposition. (I undoubtedly will lose OXIL.UK to the spanish company who owns OXIL.COM who will probably beat me at auction and then host from a UK certificated server provided by Mr. Vollrath et al. - but that’s another matter)

The key stakeholders here are:

- brandholders who struggle to capture the right names, probably unaware of the whole proposal (because they usually scream very loudly when there’s any move to open up new namespace)
- portfolio holders
- registrars
- citizens who are about to be bombarded with citizen.google, citizen.bbc, citizen.london, name.twitter, name.twit .. and old.co.uk, and new.uk
- the UK government who owns the UK brand and has been bamboozled by promises of a safer, crime-free, happy internet

The non-communicators send out their marketing guy to big up .co.uk and then stop doing that and big up .uk and their lawyer who apparently talks about an auction being a fair process (please correct me on this, I cannot find the reference).

In the meantime, just reading this thread it is quite clear that we don’t know what we want, there are threats and opportunities and no consistent view about the best way forward.

The first consultation was dreadful, conducted behind closed doors and with QC’s wheeled in to tell Dickie, Thomas, Nora .. that they can’t vote (gosh well they could have saved £30K by not bothering to get that advice for a start). The situation calls for engagement and a bottom up consultation, and a vote amongst the membership to test the desirability of such a shock to our market. Sorry three shocks, they are also proposing DNSSEC, and UK patriotism at the same time. They may or may not be good ideas, but all together - crazy!

It’s time to engage with the members and stakeholders BEFORE they decide what to do. I'm not convinced that these people are capable of doing that.

 

[foz]

All this tinkering by ccTLDs Registries of late will cause more distress and disruption than any and all of the forthcoming gTLDS will bring.

Remember ccTLDs have the distinct advantage that they are an official geographic extension, with many years of use and exposure behind them. Now it seems (from out of nowhere) we must do something? and for what?

 

[Edwin]

Remember ccTLDs have the distinct advantage that they are an official geographic extension, with many years of use and exposure behind them. Now it seems (from out of nowhere) we must do something? and for what?

For the Nominet bonus pool, of course

The fact that performance related bonuses have been granted to senior Nominet staff is public knowledge, and as I have demonstrated on a number of occasions, .uk IN ANY FORM is a huge windfall for Nominet (far outstripping any historic revenue growth rate)

 

[GreyWing]

For the Nominet bonus pool, of course

The fact that performance related bonuses have been granted to senior Nominet staff is public knowledge, and as I have demonstrated on a number of occasions, .uk IN ANY FORM is a huge windfall for Nominet (far outstripping any historic revenue growth rate)

Jeez, lol mate, you can sit next to me in court.... :-D

 

[foz]

For the Nominet bonus pool, of course

The fact that performance related bonuses have been granted to senior Nominet staff is public knowledge, and as I have demonstrated on a number of occasions, .uk IN ANY FORM is a huge windfall for Nominet (far outstripping any historic revenue growth rate)

Not applicable in the .nz case?

 

[Edwin]

Not applicable in the .nz case?

I don't know how the executives who run .nz are remunerated, so I have no idea if the .nz concept has any effect on them personally.

It's clear that if .nz goes ahead, then the registry will see a windfall in the form of the added revenue from parallel registrations because it's able to sell two domains where before there was only one.

 

[foz]

It's clear that if .nz goes ahead, then the registry will see a windfall in the form of the added revenue from parallel registrations because it's able to sell two domains where before there was only one.

For sure. NZ$18 wholesale per domain x 500,000 domains = NZ$9 Million.

I still believe top brass are proposing these extensions (.uk and .nz) based on an unknown fear of the new gTLDs. They clearly don't have an understanding that these new extensions will never get the traction over and above the official geographic domain extensions. Other gTLDs to date have proven this.

 

[monaghan]

The bit I don't get is why they think it is a good thing, yes there will be a short term windfall (perhaps the current board will all take the bonus and then move on elsewhere!), but in time the 3rd level domains will simply die as people will be registering .uk, the .com, .london (or other TLD) and not bother about the third level, at the moment there's potential to sell the same domain as a .co.uk, .org.uk and .me.uk, once we get to .uk, there's only 1 chance to sell the name with a UK flavour, if profit is required, then adding further 2nd levels to .uk gives more choice and more ongoing revenue. Of course, the big registrars will be offering the registrant further new TLD's so they gain at Nominet's loss.

If the DNC can suggest offering existing registrants the chance of theirname.nz, I can't see why Nominet can't do the same, this would of course exclude the auction windfall, but we have surplus funds to the point that they are shifting pots of cash into the Nominet trust and propping up the .wales system, so other than paying bonuses why do we need the windfall?

 

[Lucien Taylor]

The bit I don't get is why they think it is a good thing, yes there will be a short term windfall (perhaps the current board will all take the bonus and then move on elsewhere!), but in time the 3rd level domains will simply die

and that's it .. in time being about 10 years

 

[anthony]

and that's it .. in time being about 10 years

...and £3.00 per annum will turn into £20.00 per annum!

 

[foz]

.nl latest Registry report http://www.sidn.nl/annualreport/dot-nl

After recording its highest growth figures ever in 2011, .nl's rate of expansion slowed in 2012. Net growth in the number of domain names was 6.6 per cent: a little less than half of the 14 per cent growth recorded in 2011. The number of new registrations actually held up well, but the number of cancellations was a lot higher. The economic circumstances certainly played a major role, as did the fact that the income from domain trading declined, prompting companies to look more critically at their domain name portfolios. Other country-code domains also had a disappointing 2012. Growth in .de (Germany) was down 77 per cent and .uk (United Kingdom) was down 54 per cent. Despite growing more slowly than in previous years, .nl's share of the Dutch market rose, to stand at 72.9 per cent by the end 2012.

In 2012, SIDN assisted three new gTLD applications: for .amsterdam, .overheidnl and .politie. SIDN expects to begin providing registry services for one or more new gTLDs – including .amsterdam – in the near future.

 

[Jay Daley]

I don't know how the executives who run .nz are remunerated, so I have no idea if the .nz concept has any effect on them personally.

I think a brief explanation of the .nz governance structure would be useful here. There are three parts to the ccTLD:

1. At the top is a membership society called InternetNZ. This has little to do with the day to day running of .nz, deciding only on big issues like the wholesale fee. It receives the income from .nz as dividend from NZRS (see below) and uses that to "protect and promote an open and uncaptureable Internet" in a variety of ways including policy submissions, events and grants.

InternetNZ has two, wholly owned subsidiaries with independent boards that it appoints:

2. The Domain Name Commission (DNCL) is the independent regulator for .nz. They determine the policy around .nz and are responsible for consultations on all proposed changes to .nz. DNCL are the ones who have drawn up the proposal to open up the second level of .nz and are consulting on it. DNCL receive almost all their income from NZRS (see below) in terms of a management fee that is deliberately not linked to the level of registrations. Nor do they have any financial targets or responsibility for the profitability of .nz. Their goals are the protection of registrants and a well functioning .nz domain name space, not profit.

3. .nz Registry Services (NZRS) is the registry operator, of which I'm the Chief Exec. We run the registry system and DNS, operate the billing and run the marketing. The policy under which we operate is set by DNCL and in addition we have an SLA between us and DNCL that we must meet. The DNCL management fee is part of our operating costs and all of our profits go to InternetNZ. Yes we do have internal financial targets, but as you can see we quite deliberately have no say at all in policy decisions like opening up the second level.

 

[Edwin]

Sounds immensely more sensible and fair than the .uk namespace setup! Thanks for sharing the specifics, Jay...

 

[WalkinDude]

If .uk is introduced it will become the must have suffix by simple virtue of the fact it offers the same meaning [what doe the .co part of .co.uk mean to Britons? Exactly nothing], in fewer letters which means less typing.

Price makes sense now because if you accept the above you then know alot of .co.uk's are going to get dumped and you gotta figure the whole idea is to increase overall revenue.

You are then opening yourself up to law suits. There's plenty of domainers with deep enough pockets to bring even at worst speculative suits from a myriad of angles. If my pockets were that deep I'd simply sue for false representation, corporate incompetence and demand to know why something as blindingly obvious as .uk wasn't put in place from the beginning. In America you could easily sue from this angle and get taken seriously. It's the most obvious question to me.

But longer term given the general economic trend you are surely reducing the domaining market. 1 for the previous price of 4? Each registration now requires 4 times more thought and the aftermarket becomes that much more cautious with this 300% price hike and all for the same thing?

But you look at any other government 'enterprise' and this is exactly the sort of adding up they tend to think makes sense so there's plenty of reason to think it's a goer.

Nominet's key role should of course bring stability to the UK internet, also high on the list is reliability, but just as important as both with the economy being what it is they should prioritize economic [domain] vibrancy.

The entire proposal as I understand it completely misses the point of what is actually needed on the UK internet landscape. We need to encourage ideas, risk, innovation not just find ever more questionable ways to increase costs as a means for one particular entity or another to raise their revenue.

But i doubt any such notions are up for consideration. They probably have tasked a group of analysts to simply project how much they lose [in dumped .co.uk's] and how much they are likely to gain in [.UK regs], and if the latter is projected higher than the former [which is a result any 'independent' 'analyst' will be encouraged to conclude just as PFI consultants were completely 'sure' it would prove to be a money saver], then they'll press ahead.

When reading on this topic I always offer silent nod to domainers like GreyWing who continue tireless work of attempting to innovate, not just farting on about value of their 'ROI'S' etc as if a domain name is a bar of gold or something. Fact is Nominet should have no such power to make a blind bit of difference to anything we as a collective decide to do, fact they do have such power to put such fear into domainers should itself be cause for concern and much debated.

 

[Skinner]

I'm looking forward to the domainers with deep ass pockets getting missile lock on nominet and starting the volley, successful or not it will be a war of attrition, and the prospect of some big holders portfolios and big website owners losing out means they will fight tooth and nail.

How much will it cost nom to defend an onslaught from 1000s of suits, frivolous or not they still have to reply and it still costs ?

How long before said onslaught starts eating away the profits and emptying the coffers ?

My pockets may not be that deep but I know many are.

 

[GreyWing]

I think a brief explanation of the .nz governance structure would be useful here. There are three parts to the ccTLD:

Great stuff Jay, the very fact you have been open and transparent about the consultations you have received and in publishing them openly is 100% the right thing to do. Whatever the decision, if people are open and transparent and justify everything then people can live with that.

By the way, One thing I keep hearing about during my ongoing issues is that there wasn't a more open and transparent chap as you in the UK when you were here. You have an amazing amount of good will from people over here you know.

All the best
GW