Reply to Nominet
Here is the email I sent Nominet a week ago.
Dear Eleanor
Thank you for your email received today. I am very surprised that your legal advisers advised you not to send emails to registrants due to the Data Protection Act and their view that “direct.uk is a proposed new and separate service and is not covered by this provision”. I would be grateful if you could send me a copy of this legal advice.
You also say that the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003 prohibits the use of emails to market similar products, and that such emails would be regarded by some as spam.
I think Nominet , and your legal advisers, are mistakenly focusing on direct.uk as a ‘new and separate service’ without giving any thought to your existing registrants (particularly .co.uk domain owners as that is the business extension as currently defined by you). Direct.uk, if it is introduced according to the proposed consultation, will adversely affect existing .co.uk registrants of their enjoyment and usage of their current domain or domains. You should be emailing existing registrants because they should be given every chance to respond to this consultation, and if they wish to, to voice their concern and opposition at a ‘new service’ that may have a disastrous effect on their business in the future.
Nominet, and your legal advisers, must be well aware, that introducing a second, similar sounding .uk extension, specifically designed for business, into the .uk namespace will certainly devalue the equivalent named existing .co.uk domain name due to loss of prestige, traffic and general confusion (i.e. emails will definitely be sent to the wrong address – possibly to a competitor in the same market). So those businesses should have been alerted at this early stage so they could respond to the consultation - not because they wanted to buy a ‘new service’ from you.
I have looked at the current privacy page on the nominet website and it certainly seems to allow you to contact registrants under 1,2 and 3 below (I have numbered the relevant paragraphs for ease of reference).
Uses made of the information
We use information held about you in the following ways:
• To ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.
1)• To provide you with information, products or services that you request from us or which we feel may interest you, where you have consented to be contacted for such purposes.
2)• To carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us.
3)• To allow you to participate in our applications process.
If you do not want us to use your data in this way, or to pass your details on to third parties for marketing purposes, please write to us using the address information shown above.
I think it will be fairly easy for legal advisers (possibly acting for registrants who find out that they were left out of the consultation process) in the future, to argue that you were certainly obliged to contact them by email ‘to carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us’. Paragraph 1) and 3) are also clearly relevant.
Can I ask you whether you, and your legal advisers, have considered the detrimental effect that direct.uk may have on your existing registrants as detailed above. If so, why are you not contacting those registrations under your ‘obligations’ shown in 2) above.
In view of the legal advice you received which stopped you sending emails to registrants, can I ask you how you propose informing registrants of the introduction of direct.uk if it proceeds in its current form? If your legal advisers believe that it is a ‘new service’ and that the Data Protection Act (and your interpretation of the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations 2003) prevents you from emailing registrants are you saying that no notice by email will be given to existing registrants of the chance to register a direct.uk domain if it proceeds? Will existing registrants need to rely on information from the media, press, and newspapers to find out about the possible launch of direct.uk?
Turning to the various events held around the country. You argue that they ‘had a good level of attendance’ whereas I have read that Belfast was cancelled due to only one person responding, and Cardiff had just four attendees. It worries me that I have only read positive reports from Nominet on the consultation process. I hope that the published consultation will include all the negative aspects of the process i.e. the fact that just four people attended your scheduled meetings for the areas of Northern Ireland and Wales. This is, in my view, a pitiful amount that discredits the whole consultation exercise. Are you not in any way disappointed at the attendance at some of your meetings? Are you not disappointed that the Belfast meeting was cancelled? Do you not agree that attendance at the meetings, and feedback to the consultation, would have been much greater if registrants had been sent an email about direct.uk?
I thank you for your attention to this and now look forward to receiving your reply.
Kind regards,
