Nominet announces new policy consultation for expiring .UK domains

[Derek]

Can anyone give a reason why we need to run this technical / cheating arms race at all? Its pretty ridiculous, and "we've always done it this way" really isn't good enough to avoid improving something.

If you can find a flaw currently you can win an unfair share of domains. If you have a bunch of "tag partners" you can win an unfair share too. I think this is going to go down the path of everything being auctioned, its the only genuinely fair way.

Why wouldn't Nominet go with the 100% fair way, that also means they get to keep the money being generated? I think they've already decided they're going to do that and this consultation is just a waste of everyones time.

 

[ian]

Much worse. I speculate that we might then find one or two parties would manage to use dozens or more individuals to create the same number of free non-member registrar tags to then use them in concert. Many others might just ask a few close friends and family members.

There’d be absolutely no setup fee or ongoing cost to do this. All those free tags sending unnecessary create requests could eventually put too much additional load on the main systems and would encourage an unnecessary proliferation of free registrar tags potentially up in the many thousands. I hope this explains where the economically controlled option in the consultation came from.

This is precisely what we had with ROR, no requirement for DAC meant countless tags were registered (without membership), waited to see the successes, then registered memberships before the billing date based on this. I get that Nominet would need to avoid this (or facilitate better control of their approval processes), but throwing a price tag on being successful panders only to those with deep pockets (maybe those that have had most success this past year or two), and doesn't even the playing field, it just reduces the need for more memberships. Having said that, I'm obviously in favour of this approach than auctions.

 

[Derek]

Having said that, I'm obviously in favour of this approach than auctions.

Why would you obviously favour a method that will encourage and reward cheating, than a fair method?

 

[diablo]

I would actually respect a Nominet Board member having the balls to come to the forum here, to argue a corner, because not many would. But please... for a person in that position to make repeated appearances under substitute usernames... that's kind of bizarre. If that applies to anyone on this thread, then kindly have the dignity to disclose yourself and I may give some attention to things you say. Otherwise - it's embarrassing. Man, I look forward to meeting you at my first Board Meeting...

Wasn't going to bother voting, but Susannah's now got my vote.

 

[mcrick]

I think they've already decided they're going to do that and this consultation is just a waste of everyones time.

I don’t think they have. I believe they are genuinely open to sensible and well thought out consultation responses.

This is precisely what we had with ROR, no requirement for DAC meant countless tags were registered (without membership), waited to see the successes, then registered memberships before the billing date based on this. I get that Nominet would need to avoid this (or facilitate better control of their approval processes), but throwing a price tag on being successful panders only to those with deep pockets (maybe those that have had most success this past year or two), and doesn't even the playing field, it just reduces the need for more memberships. Having said that, I'm obviously in favour of this approach than auctions.

Don’t you think that it ultimately always comes back to money, and has done for the past twenty years too? How much is one party prepared to pay to gain a limited resource compared to another. I’ve obviously read claims by some that they say they’ve never breached the AUPs but I suspect a significant number of others have been involved in registar (and membership to gain multiple DAC) stacking through proxies to one extent or another, from the mild to the severe. Even those that are customers of hosted service that mandate all catches go to auction and proceeds are split 50:50 aren’t operating at arms length, which is surely a breach of the AUPs too.

The options presented in the consultation paper were probably not the only options considered but they are the most logical. Obviously auctions are commonplace. The other economically controlled option is to try to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary membership and registrar tag resources while at the same time offering a dedicated system with a way for registrars to participate by instead paying for more access and using more technical means. Nominet accept that some won’t stop themselves from finding a way to pay for more access and trying to prevent that is fruitless. Might be sensible for us all to be honest and open about that part. A lot of people have likely done very well with a system that hasn’t been reviewed in an incredibly long time but eventually things have needed reviewing. Staying as things are doesn’t seem sensible.

 

[Murray]

Whether you like catching or not it's a welcome income for a lot of individuals

Ok some might be people using unsavoury methods to get an unfair slice of the pie but even the crumbs are decent for people like me

Of all the times for Nominet to take away a means of making some income 2020 seems like the worst

I know they don't owe anyone a living but still, unfortunate timing

 

[timter51]

Can someone expand on what this "new flaw"? Even if it's fixed I'd be interested purely out of curiosity. I never knew of one other than the infamous DAC slowdown, but I never put any effort into find anything else after that stopped. Maybe I should have

 

[ian]

Why would you obviously favour a method that will encourage and reward cheating, than a fair method?

Hard to have dialogue with someone when I don't know who they are, but in brief, I don't favour a method for that purpose, but I do favour any method that doesn't take away the element of luck involved in drop catching, as small a percentage as that is. There are hundreds of tags in this community that play the drop catch game, and don't invest in higher ticket value domains; that revenue stream would be largely taken away which is a shame. There are a handful of individuals that buy said high ticket items, and neither approach would directly impact them.

Don’t you think that it ultimately always comes back to money, and has done for the past twenty years too? How much is one party prepared to pay to gain a limited resource compared to another. I’ve obviously read claims by some that they say they’ve never breached the AUPs but I suspect a significant number of others have been involved in registar (and membership to gain multiple DAC) stacking through proxies to one extent or another, from the mild to the severe. Even those that are customers of hosted service that mandate all catches go to auction and proceeds are split 50:50 aren’t operating at arms length, which is surely a breach of the AUPs too.

The options presented in the consultation paper were probably not the only options considered but they are the most logical. Obviously auctions are commonplace. The other economically controlled option is to try to prevent the proliferation of unnecessary membership and registrar tag resources while at the same time offering a dedicated system with a way for registrars to participate by instead paying for more access and using more technical means. Nominet accept that some won’t stop themselves from finding a way to pay for more access and trying to prevent that is fruitless. Might be sensible for us all to be honest and open about that part. A lot of people have likely done very well with a system that hasn’t been reviewed in an incredibly long time but eventually things have needed reviewing. Staying as things are doesn’t seem sensible.

I think we largely agree on this point; money has always been a deciding factor (and ethics), but ultimately Nominet have looked at this and decided to protect their margin, they should offer a tiered system to compensate for loss of members. I don't think it is any coincidence that this decision will come after August renewals. Why couldn't Nominet have considered the ROR tiered approach; credit your account with X amount, get X creates per minute. Assuming this is David, happy to discuss privately some points.

 

[Derek]

but I do favour any method that doesn't take away the element of luck involved in drop catching, as small a percentage as that is.

But if you want to involve luck in the transaction, you'll end up with something similar to what we have now. Someones "tag partners" and an Eastern European village seeing a lot of the "luck".

I think in theory the luck angle is fine. But it doesn't work in any real life situation we can come up with. When you add in money, greed and the ease of cheating it just becomes a mess.

I'd like to see a "lucky" angle if anyone could come up with a cheat proof system. How could that be done? I think its probably impossible.

 

[davedevelopment]

Much worse. I speculate that we might then find one or two parties would manage to use dozens or more individuals to create the same number of free non-member registrar tags to then use them in concert. Many others might just ask a few close friends and family members.

There’d be absolutely no setup fee or ongoing cost to do this. All those free tags sending unnecessary create requests could eventually put too much additional load on the main systems and would encourage an unnecessary proliferation of free registrar tags potentially up in the many thousands. I hope this explains where the economically controlled option in the consultation came from.

Not sure if I consider that much worse, people are already creating multiple accounts and I imagine the only thing that is stopping them creating more, is that they want to try and remain under the radar, rather than the fees etc. Perhaps nominet should have focused on fixing that first.

 

[Derek]

Not sure if I consider that much worse, people are already creating multiple accounts and I imagine the only thing that is stopping them creating more, is that they want to try and remain under the radar, rather than the fees etc. Perhaps nominet should have focused on fixing that first.

A lot of people are saying "fix it" but nobody is saying how thats going to be viable.

How can you stop me signing up for accounts/tags/lottery draws/whatever in other peoples names? I can pay them to do it, they can do it from their own homes, devices, ip, bank cards. If you can't come up with a solution to stop me doing that then we need a new solution.

 

[WalkinDude]

I'm not even sure if i care too much anymore. There's too many tags now and the same small group of people catching the contested stuff I'm not sure how much it bothers me personally. You've got the same person often catching multiple contested domains each and every day it makes me question why i bother paying for my membership. Maybe not a bad thing?

Not a tag but maybe worthwhile hanging on. Nominet say themselves it's the same 10 tags getting all the domains. Since that's been acknowledged and as in any industry completely unacceptable they are going to have to do something about it.

If this was America a future class action lawsuit would be inevitable because the business of catching names is hardly fair competition and barriers to entry exist not by way of any obvious barrier Nominet created but by Nominet turning a blind eye on the fact system isn't working fairly or openly for many years. I mean if there was any legal potential in that first place lawyer gonna go is right here and read up on the endless complaints about it all. Not saying the suit would be successful just saying it would be launched and wouldn't surprise me if that does happen over here.

I'm no lawyer but if people are claiming of catching cartels, it remains unknown if the top tags have colluded with each other to their own exclusive and collective advantage but it's certainly known they've accused each other of collusion.

If I was a tag I'd hang on. Try and find any industry that hasn't faced legacy class action lawsuits.

Fact Nominet themselves have been caused to become so concerned they are changing the system is an admission something is wrong as things stand.

As a non tag I'd say what's wrong is domaining in the UK hasn't got a mainstream face. Still a bunch of people doing it, I find it impossible to imagine how Joe or Joanna Bloggs would have obvious and encouraging entry points into it. Most successful domainers are ridiculously self-motivated individuals imho, massive iq's, and it's pretty much stayed that way for like two decades. This isn't actually helpful to the industry. I'd liken it if to if BMW said only people with 140plus iq's [not a believer in IQ tests myself], could buy their cars.

If I had the dosh I'd just hire the lawyers and set them lose on all of this. There's no reason any tag should feel they are at any particular disadvantage. The shouldn't be caused to question their investment in being a tag or caused to feel all sorts of sh... goes on pertinent to their investment they don't know about.

My words are not an attack on the successful individual tags who don't collude, don't see much of any legal concern they should have. They've seized an opportunity Nominet should never have allowed to let arisen or become so funnelled in the first place.

 

[Ben Thomas]

Ben we know you have at least 5 tags because you decided to share that info with me, when you were in the process of using me. You’ve got a little temper on you haven’t you. But if you feel you need to message me privately again and speak to me in a threatening attitude, I’ll drive to Grimsby and we can have the conversation face to face. I couldn’t give a shit what edge you have, or that I don’t know how to code. Some of us have different skills. Coding low level languages isn’t one of mine.

Congratulations, you gamed a system and probably brought around a change, that’ll significantly affect all of our abilities to make money from this industry.

Go you!

 

[Murray]

I don't blame everyone who is cheating

It's like when toilet rolls started running out at the supermarket it forced you to buy some and hoard yourself even if you didn't want to partake

It's Nominets fault for nor enforcing the rules, albeit people are saying they can't enforce them but maybe they just have to go off it's obvious even if they haven't got hard evidence

Like when you have a David Thornton posting, you can't be sure 100%, but you know and can take appropriate action

 

[PoshTiger]

Ben we know you have at least 5 tags because you decided to share that info with me, when you were in the process of using me. You’ve got a little temper on you haven’t you. But if you feel you need to message me privately again and speak to me in a threatening attitude, I’ll drive to Grimsby and we can have the conversation face to face. I couldn’t give a shit what edge you have, or that I don’t know how to code. Some of us have different skills. Coding low level languages isn’t one of mine.

Congratulations, you gamed a system and probably brought around a change, that’ll significantly affect all of our abilities to make money from this industry.

Go you!

Let me know when you're going to Grimsby - I'll come too..

 

[Siusaidh]

Gentlemen, shall we play nicely please? If it wasn't intended as humour, I am sorrowfully obliged to delete your post for threatening language... if you were just planning to visit Grimsby for its cultural highlights, then good luck with that.

 

[Murray]

Thinking about it you can tell who is cheating just not prove it

So the answer is instead of maybe punishing the wrong person, you punish everyone..

100% be punished with auctions or very unlikely be punished for something you haven't done

I know which option everyone should choose?

I don't know about the legality but I'd be happy when renewing my membership to agree to a new registrar agreement that they can inhibit my ability to catch if they suspect me of violating the rules at any time without any evidence

 

[Breakline]

Wow, this is great. No honour among thieves so let's go to auction and see who can get what. Thank you denys, bhaydom, bulgarians and ukbackorder.

 

[PoshTiger]

Gentlemen, shall we play nicely please? If it wasn't intended as humour, I am sorrowfully obliged to delete your post for threatening language... if you were just planning to visit Grimsby for its cultural highlights, then good luck with that.

Actually - I think I'm done here...

If you guys are fine with this toxic guy being here, then I guess this place is not for me any more..

Old schoolers know where to contact me if you need to..

 

[Siusaidh]

I 'get' that point, Murray, but it's a total minefield. Better to re-write the rules for validating Nominet membership and making 'arms length' more stringent. There's also the question of multiple tags. How many tags does a person need to be a law-abiding citizen? The real difficulty remains, how do you ever prove collusion. I don't drop-catch, but how could Nominet ever stop me from inviting my aunties and sundry relatives and friends in the Scottish Highlands to become Nominet members, and my cousins in Australia, and my randomised nursing colleagues past and present? And the village postman?

The rules, as they stand, can't be enforced. Therefore the rules need to be re-written, or you just accept the mayhem for the sake of all the honest people's businesses. Nominet are clearly not prepared to do that.