July PAB meeting report

[Whois-Search]

July PAB meeting report is online:

http://www.nic.uk/news/latest/?contentId=4237

Important points:

Domaining

In order to inform the debate, the Executive was asked to identify the main areas of concern among Nominet's stakeholders with regard to domaining/dropcatching and to give some idea of the number and nature of the concerns.
Eleanor Bradley offered to bring a menu of policy options to the September meeting.

Lock State

Eleanor Bradley offered a more detailed discussion paper and to create a 'best-fit' solution together with draft policy statements for the PAB's consideration in September.

Positive Renewals

Eleanor Bradley gave an update on the review of the positive renewals process. She anticipates bringing the review to the September meeting.

DRS Consultation

One member asked to delay this discussion so that other members and stakeholders could consider the paper in more detail. The Chair said he did not think he had the ability to do so. As he understood it, this paper simply provides the Board's feedback to the PAB on the DRS consultation after which the consultation period closes in accordance with established guidelines.

Gordon Dick confirmed that the DRS document sets out Nominet's proposed response to the consultation process. Nominet invites comments and feedback from the PAB.

Phishing

The PAB debated and amended the wording from the Executive paper on Phishing.

Appointed members

The PAB tasked Marianne to further discussions with the Social Policy Manager of the Citizens Advice Bureau about possible membership of the PAB.

Matters arising

Andrew Bennett declared a conflict of interest but said that there had been over 100 emails on Nom-steer and other fora about the Domain Availability Checker (DAC) Standard Terms and Conditions and asked Nominet to revisit the wording on 5.3.6 to clarify the meaning of 'insubstantial'.

 

[retired_member11]

Who is the Chair of the PAB?

 

[Whois-Search]

Who is the Chair of the PAB?

Eric Ramage
Appointed from: Institute of Trade Mark Attorneys

 

[grandin]

Contract

Who wrote the contract of registration?

 

[grandin]

Absent

Andrew do you know why the representative from the DTI, Cabinet Office, IOC were all absent when you were discussing the DRS?

Lee

 

[Whois-Search]

Andrew do you know why the representative from the DTI, Cabinet Office, IOC were all absent when you were discussing the DRS?

Lee

Dave Evans from the ICO said he was on leave. The other two haven't given a reason publicly to the PAB but might have done to Nominet.

Also I haven't had a straight answer from Nominet yet as to whether the board has actually approved the DRS feedback report.

Remember even if everyone was there the PAB doesn't have the power to get rid of say the "default transfer policy" or extend the consultation. Due to the PDP flowchart we can only "comment" on it.

 

[grandin]

Andrew

Nominets reason for not pre vetting rights is...they are not for profit and work on a cost recovery basis...

This is the first time I have ever seen a company claim they can sell dodgy products cause their margins are tight....

Do you know anything about this statement Andrew?

Lee

 

[Whois-Search]

Nominets reason for not pre vetting rights is...they are not for profit and work on a cost recovery basis...

This is the first time I have ever seen a company claim they can sell dodgy products cause their margins are tight....

Do you know anything about this statement Andrew?

Lee

No but I know what your getting at Lee.

I know people that have had bailiffs turn up at their house with a High Court Writ - all for a £5 domain name.

How do you suggest Nominet advises registrants of this potential risk?

Would you like to see a full cigarette packet style warning http://www.notestomyself.net/notes/images/050612_english_fag_warning.jpg in the registrant contract? Or for Registrars to promote services like a trademark search http://www.ipo.gov.uk/tm/t-find/t-find-text.htm next to the a whois lookup?

 

[retired_member11]

Writs? What is this about?

 

[Whois-Search]

Writs? What is this about?

Instead of using the DRS some large corporates will take out a High Court injuction/law suit on you/a domain name instead.

 

[retired_member12]

... therefore moving the issue into the public arena. Are you aware of how many times this has happened at all?

 

[olebean]

is this related to UK or further a field?

 

[grandin]

Andrew

A health warning on a packet of cigs does not stop a shop keeper from being prosecuted if it was reasonable to assume that the fag buyer was under 16....

Whilst a health warning on a domain name wrapper would be an improvement it does not deal with the under 16 year old i.e. Nominet should not be offering tescoestateagents.co.uk to a entity that isn't tescos the supermarket giant.... pre vetting registrations is the route but Nominet ignore this....if I was a judge then I would certainly make Nominet partly accountable for offering the good in the first place.....8 years ago I would have said different

Maybe Nominet as merely weighing up the relative costs...a cheap DRS would limit their liability in the courts....the cost of being sued as opposed to the cost of pre-vetting domain names

the dodgy domain name default transfer is clearly damage limitation in my eyes

Lee

 

[olebean]

Lee

It would be interesting to know the out of court settlement figure for sex.com.

A domain is a good? There is no agreed definition as to what a domain name is, it is agreed what the DNS does.

I'm also interested in what you feel Andrew or able to to if he felt your arguement carried weight

 

[grandin]

Andrew

Andrew has an interest in peoples views, I have given my view.

I do not believe Nominet will come to my way of thinking unless they are considered by the courts as party to a rights issue...if they keep the DRS shifting dodgy names quickly at low cost that day may never come....saying that any registrant may feel that Nominet misled them to believe they could have a domain name (but was taken from them in a DRS)....they could goto the county court and ask for the renewal fees back along with expenses related to the drs complaint.. a novice domainer could well be able to do this

Lee

 

[olebean]

Your suggestion gives added weight to the unilateral approval of rights to organisations where those rights may be unwarranted, that may embroil Nominet in litigation for not approving registrations. In effect it is the reverse of what Nominet are doing now and you would probably slate them if they didn’t get it right, which is ironic when experienced judges cannot get it.

We could make it easier and just give all the domains to corporates!


BTW, Do you have a cost to your way of thinking?

 

[grandin]

remarkable

No remarkable business has ever been created without trying to make it remarkable in the first place....it is not impossible to pre vet domain names it just needs more than denial....

a mind is a mind and if a true mind is a judges mind then Nominet are likely to have to cough up one day

Lee

 

[Whois-Search]

The UK naming committee used to pre vet domain names?

Quote from 14 May 1996:

The .uk domains are administered by the UK naming committee which consists of the large ISP's who passively vote on whether certain names should be allowed.

There are rules about using names so that you are not passing yourself off as
someone else, and it is difficult to get 3 letter acronyms registered unless
your company is really well known by them e.g the RAC. Nor can you use a name likely to cause offence. Speculative naming is also supposedly forbidden.
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/de...ming+committee"&rnum=5&hl=en#33229e6440ec5f01

One from 1 Jul 1996:

At present full members of the committee make
the rules and vote on whether requested domains meet them. Guest
members (full members friends, customers etc.) get to request names
free, but can't vote. When a name is approved authority for it is
delegated by the SOA (Start of Authority) for the higher level
domain e.g. the SOA for co.uk (PSInet) delegates authority for
innotts.co.uk to the SOA for that subdomain. This delegation
needs to point to nameservers (machines that are permanently
connected to the Internet) that answer queries about the
domain such as "What is the numeric IP address of the machine
carlton.innotts.co.uk?", or "Which machine in the innotts.co.uk
domain accepts email for the domain?".
http://groups.google.co.uk/group/uk...ming+Committee"&rnum=4&hl=en#8f838d0f521439b1

However today more domains are registered each month than there was in the whole database back then?
1996: http://www.nominet.org.uk/intelligence/statistics/registration/1996/
Today: http://www.nominet.org.uk/intelligence/statistics/registration/

Nominet would need an automated system to pre-vet domain names?

I like the way Companies House XML Interface works to check company names: http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/toolsToHelp/efilingfaqUpdate.shtml

Maybe under EPP Nominet could allow companies to pay to block keywords like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Virgin etc However only the law/drs can prove if a keyword is generic or not? Some people will object to certain keywords being blocked?

 

[grandin]

citi group case

The judge in the citi group case could not find a conceivable reason why citigroup needed to be registered by anyone apart from the well known rights holder.....this sort of name is the type of name that could bring Nominet into the picture given their level of knowledge as at today

Lee

 

[fred]

Maybe under EPP Nominet could allow companies to pay to block keywords like Apple, Microsoft, Google, Virgin etc However only the law/drs can prove if a keyword is generic or not? Some people will object to certain keywords being blocked?

The judge in the citi group case could not find a conceivable reason why citigroup needed to be registered by anyone apart from the well known rights holder.....this sort of name is the type of name that could bring Nominet into the picture given their level of knowledge as at today

Lee

The problem is that while it might be clear that nobody should have a need to register names including "Microsoft" or "Citigroup", and that 'generic' keywords such as "Orange", "Virgin", "Easy" and "Apple" should NOT be blocked, there are also 'grey areas' such as "ebay".

For example, I should not register "ebayauctions" but why can't I have "MorecambeBay"?

You would need to manually check every domain, causeing both delays and opening up Nominet to the risk of legal challenges. Delaying registrations with extra checking will also add costs.