Received an E-mail from XYZ INVEST LLC today

[sdsinc]

"important message on Nominet's .uk proposal": 5 pages

and I guess we are not the only ones

 

[Edwin]

What was in it? A sales pitch?

 

[sdsinc]

No

I think it's ok to paste the message (and the PDF):

Hello,

The purpose of this e-mail is to make you aware of action being taken by Nominet that is likely to harm your financial interests, specifically your interest in the domain name di.co.uk and possibly others.

As you may know, Nominet is currently proposing opening up the second level of the .uk TLD to domain name registrations. Part of their current proposal includes a provision giving owners of third level .uk names a right of first refusal over the equivalent second level .uk. However, in the case that more than one third-level registrant tries to exercise this right of first refusal the right will go to the registrant with the longest continual registration.

This approach is plainly unfair to the buyers of the one and two character domain names that Nominet auctioned off in 2011. Because of the order that Nominet auctioned off these short domains, in most instances a less valuable third-level domain will get the right of first refusal over a more valuable third-level domain (ie. me.uk over co.uk). As such, it is very important that the buyers of the .co.uk domain names band together to lobby for Nominet to use a separate rule for the one and two character domain names. The approach that is in the best interest of the short domain owners on the whole and also the fairest is to give the right of first refusal to the domain name that went for the highest price at the Nominet auction.

XYZ INVEST LLC, which has spent well over £500,000 on these short domains, has already submitted a letter to Nominet as part of Nominet's consultation period on this proposal. This letter, which you find attached, explains why a change to the current proposal is needed. Since we know that you are likely in a similar position us, we politely request that you submit your own comments to Nominet. This can be done here. For your convenience, we have attached both a .docx and a .pdf of our letter in case you would like to use our letter as the basis for yours. If you would like to simply agree with our arguments, feel free to write to Nominet that you agree with XYZ INVEST LLC's comments and proposal.

If we all take a moment to submit a comment, it will greatly help our positions moving forward. The consultation period ends on September 23rd, 2013. Thank you very much for your time and feel free to contact us with any questions or feedback.


Sincerely,

XYZ INVEST LLC

Again, I would be surprised if nobody here got this as well.

 

[Edwin]

Interesting stuff, thanks. I proposed the same approach in my consultation response.

Incidentally, Nominet's handling of the 2011 auction process suggests that even they had no idea about direct.uk at the time - otherwise it would have made sense to juggle the release order of the 1 and 2 letter domains so that .co.uk got released first.