.ltd.uk changes

[simonb]

http://www.nominet.org.uk/about/consultations/CompanyDomainNames/

Nominet are considering retrospectivly changing the rules on .ltd.uk which would see me loose a domain I paid 5 figures for. To say I would be livid if they just took my domain & website away from me is an understatement. Is anyone else in the same situation?

 

[Edwin]

Sorry about your situation, but in general I think their move is a very good one as it cleans up a long-standing discrepancy between the way Companies House assigns company names and Nominet treats related domains.

It used to be that a company could come along and register itself as "@Hotel Ltd" and get hotel.ltd.uk off the back of that but now Nominet will map that to "AtHotel" and therefore they'd only be entitled to "AtHotel.ltd.uk".

The new rules make a lot more sense, and should in general see domains flow to more "legitimate" owners - over the years, I've come across quite a lot of "@" companies and similar dodges, and in almost all cases they never seem to "do" anything but have been formed for the sole purpose of getting the .ltd.uk by exploiting Nominet's loophole.

That should in turn gradually bring more use of the .ltd.uk and .plc.uk namespaces, which is a good thing on the whole as they make a handy "corporate site" extension, keeping the .co.uk free for the consumer/b2b-facing site (assuming that the relevant Ltd owns the .co.uk I mean)

 

[simonb]

My company is activly trading and has done for almost 5 years. In your example what happens to the poor guy who owns At Hotel Ltd what does he get to use if @Hotel have already nabbed the domain. Doesn't make any sense?

Fair play changing the rules for new registrations but you can't go around taking peoples domains & websites from them without undermining they whole registry.

 

[Edwin]

Sorry, thought you were asking for general comments about the changes. I can't comment on your specific situation, not knowing the details - my opinion above was about the proposed changes as a whole.

 

[atlas]

Nominet seems to be aware of the issue:

There is a chance that a change to the rules may result in a new company being eligible for a domain name which has already been registered under the old rules. Do you think that the new rules should be applied to existing domain names registered in the .ltd.uk and .plc.uk SLDs? If so, how should we make it easier for affected registrants to transition to a new domain name?

Might be worthwhile making a submission on this issue. Just doing a quick Google search there seems to be a lot of material already written on the unfairness of a retroactive application of the law, so it should be fairly straightforward to put something together.

 

[GreyWing]

Any retrospective changes which lead to domains being taken off people is not a good sign in my opinion. But as Jeff says write a submission to Nominet.

Why do they mention to the PAB though? thought that was disbanded over a year ago.

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In fact just checked and these date back to 2009. Nearly 3 years for an idea to be a coma and then suddenly pop up it very odd indeed.

 

[simonb]

Yes - i'm just interested in finding people in the same boat to try and co-ordinate a response.

Email me if you are: [email protected]