.UK Announced

[Nigel]

I'm not even sure Nominet has the legal right to roll out .uk, it was never founded on that basis, which stems only from .uk sub domains managed by the UK Naming Committee. Authority for coordinating and administering the co.uk sub-domain was delegated to the UK Naming Committee made up of three commercial and two non-commercial Internet Access Providers. However, the Joint Network Team, which subsequently evolved into the UK Education and Research Networking Association (UKERNA), maintained a right of veto over decisions reached by this committee. Nominet evolved from the committee, which still to this day has no control .ac.uk.

Any decision which may affect the educational establishments of the UK in any way should be referred to Parlaiment.

very good point Anthony

 

[Stephen]

Just read this on the i.co.uk site. Has this been discussed on here? Has anyone got a link to the old release on this as I'd like to see it.

"We also just picked up this little snippet from an old release concerning the Short Domain consultation Nominet undertook back in 2010 prior to an issue relating to a little over 2,800 short domains. “Nominet also wrote to the holders of approximately 20,000 trademarks corresponding to the character sets potentially subject to release ……” So they contacted directly 20,000 POTENTIAL stakeholders as part of that consultation but not the ACTUAL 10,276,759 stakeholders this go round. hmmmmmmm"

and the link is here:
http://i.co.uk/?p=11797

Thanks for that.

Early in this thread, I was sceptical about the posts about how Nominet were just interested in monies and that the web redesign of the Nominet website in October 2012 enabled them to bury many old links.

Now I'm not so sure?

 

[Nigel]

Thanks for that.

Early in this thread, I was sceptical about the posts about how Nominet were just interested in monies and that the web redesign of the Nominet website in October 2012 enabled them to bury many old links.

Now I'm not so sure?

Nothing surprises me about the way they operate any more. Is the owner of i.co.uk a member on here? Perhaps he could publish the full release if he still has a copy.

 

[miked]

Another MP to add to those that have made representations to Nominet: my local MP Clive Betts (Sheffield South-East), who wrote to them after meeting me in early December.

Just received an eMail the Head of Secretariat (whatever that is) at Nominet. Very polite, simply reasserting present position of 'more concrete news after the consultation'. Only interesting points were that after Mr. Betts' letter apparently the CEO herself asked the HoS to contact me, and that she noted that I submitted my feedback on the 1st of October (probably marks me out as a tad keen/awkward...).

Roll on the February meeting, I suppose...

 

[Nigel]

Another MP to add to those that have made representations to Nominet: my local MP Clive Betts (Sheffield South-East), who wrote to them after meeting me in early December.

Just received an eMail the Head of Secretariat (whatever that is) at Nominet. Very polite, simply reasserting present position of 'more concrete news after the consultation'. Only interesting points were that after Mr. Betts' letter apparently the CEO herself asked the HoS to contact me, and that she noted that I submitted my feedback on the 1st of October (probably marks me out as a tad keen/awkward...).

Roll on the February meeting, I suppose...

Well done Mike - every MP counts. I have just written to Helen Goodman - MP for Bishop Auckland. It's not my constituency but she is the Shadow Minister responsible for this so I think its appropriate to get her involved. (I did check with her Parliamentary office and she deals with Nominet matters and shadows Ed Vaizey). If anyone is in her constituency then it might help if you also write to her.

I have just written to Eleanor Bradley, COO Nominet again. Mike -you might like to make your MP aware of the question Stephen McPartland asked in Parliament on behalf of small businesses with .co.uk addresses. It is my concern that Ed Vaizey did not directly answer the question and did not furnish Parliament with all the relevant facts - including the crucial fact that nominet did not, in fact, write to any small businesses with .co.uk addresses. Here's my latest email to Eleanor Bradley:


"Dear Ms Bradley

Thank you for your letter of 15 January 2013. I would like to take this opportunity to appraise you of some information and then ask you some further questions.


On 8 January 2013 Stephen McPartland MP asked a question in Parliament on behalf of small businesses with .co.uk addresses. Minister Ed Vaizey MP provided the response. This is the exchange as recorded in Hansard.



"On Tuesday 8th January 2013 Stephen McPartland MP asked a Parliamentary question regarding .uk:

To ask the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport what steps she plans to take to ensure that small businesses with .co.uk addresses are not put at a disadvantage by the creation of the .uk domain name.

The response by the Minister Ed Vaizey MP was:

Nominet is recognised by the Government as the registry with responsibility for oversight of the “.uk” top level internet domain. It is a private sector, not for profit, public purpose company. Its day-to-day operations are not subject to regulation by the Government. Nominet welcomes suggestions about “.uk”policy development. It is currently carrying out a public consultation on proposals to create a new shorter “.uk” domain with enhanced security features which would allow for the first time registrations at the second level immediately before the dot (e.g. “culture.uk”).


Nominet has informed Government that its consultation is gathering perspectives from a broad range of stakeholders—including small businesses and their representatives—to inform their decision-making. Nominet has stated that it will be carefully considering that feedback in line with the company’s public purpose.


Hansard source (Citation: HC Deb, 8 January 2013, c213W)"

Mr Vaizey does not directly answer Mr McPartland's question but instead refers to the 'public consultation' and information he says has been supplied to him by Nominet. I believe Mr Vaizey should have informed Parliament that existing registrants, including the small businesses with .co.uk addresses, which were the specific subject of Mr McPartland's question, had not been contacted about the "public consultation on proposals to create a new shorter “.uk” domain". Nominet are well aware of the controversy caused by this decision, a decision which means that the feedback you received will not be from a balanced cross section of your existing customers. Many small businesses with .co.uk addresses would have given you feedback had they been advised of the consultation. I have been in correspondence with you on this very subject since 20 December 2012, and it is a major topic that has been discussed on forums and at your meetings. I am surprised that Mr Vaizey did not furnish Parliament with this information.

In this respect I have just watched a Nominet webcast of your .uk Registrar Conference 2012 held at Sky Loft, Millbank Tower on 21 November 2012. Here is the link:

http://www.nominet.org.uk/how-participate/events/events-meetings/uk-registrar-conference

I believe you were present at this conference. During a Question and Answers Session (at around 35.40 minutes to 38 minutes) the following question was answered by 'Phil' (I believe he is one of the executives who helped shape the consultation process). The question was "What was our decision making thoughts when we decided not to contact or try to contact 10m people and small businesses and large businesses". Phil answered "so the decision making behind the contacting of the 10m .co.uk holders, .org.uk holders and .me.uk holders, the thinking behind that was that, that actually Nick might be better, be better placed to answer this question, but from a legal perspective, from a data protection perspective we would be unable to do that from a perspective of potentially spamming people".

Could you please answer each of the following questions

1) a) Have Nominet informed Mr Vaizey that existing registrants (including all small businesses with .uk addresses) were not informed about the direct.uk consultation. Have you told Mr Vaizey that these 'small businesses with .co.uk addresses' were not asked for feedback.

b) If so, on what date did you inform Mr Vaizey of this fact.

2) Can you clarify a point for me. In your latest email you made the following comment 'The process, as designed by the executive did not include a recommendation to contact every registrant of an existing .uk domain as it was felt that such mass emailing was inappropriate action for a domain name registry to take...' . I take it that 'inappropriate action' refers to the fact that the executive, having received 'legal advice', felt they could not, legally, contact your existing registrants. That was the reason you gave me in writing on 28 December 2012 and confirmed by 'Phil' at the .uk Registrar conference on 21 November 2012. Please confirm that I am correct in this assumption.


3) You have refused to supply me with a copy of the 'legal advice' received from your 'in house legal team'. Can you confirm that this 'legal advice' was put in writing and can you also confirm the date on which this 'legal advice 'was given?


4) Did the executive ever consider getting external legal advice on this matter?


Thank you for your attention to this. I now look forward to hearing from you."

 

[Edwin]

Worth mentioning at this point that MPs (unlike Nominet) are subject to the Freedom of Information Act, if anyone wants to take new "ammunition" raised by some of the recent posts and find out who knew what, who was told what, etc... and get the exact wording of any communications.

 

[Brassneck]

Worth mentioning at this point that MPs (unlike Nominet) are subject to the Freedom of Information Act, if anyone wants to take new "ammunition" raised by some of the recent posts and find out who knew what, who was told what, etc... and get the exact wording of any communications.

Edwin

I don't think that is technically correct. MPs are not Government or public authorities. This sets out the situation I think - http://www.parliament.uk/site-information/foi/

Stephen.

 

[Stephen]

Baroness Fritchie

Has anybody seen Baroness Fritchie (Nominet chair person) at any of the Nominet .uk roundtable meetings or the UK registrar meeting in London or seen any views from her about the Nominet .uk proposal?

I have not but did come across this when looking into .wales Nominet is trying to launch:

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2012/12/19/baroness-fritchie-has-time-for-everybody-s-troubles-91466-32454173/

 

[GreyWing]

Has anybody seen Baroness Fritchie (Nominet chair person) at any of the Nominet .uk roundtable meetings or the UK registrar meeting in London or seen any views from her about the Nominet .uk proposal?

I have not but did come across this when looking into .wales Nominet is trying to launch:

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2012/12/19/baroness-fritchie-has-time-for-everybody-s-troubles-91466-32454173/

She was supposed to be at the Milbank Tower one, in fact Chairing / presenting instead of Piers it but she turned up an hour or more late and stood at the back.

 

[Nigel]

Has anybody seen Baroness Fritchie (Nominet chair person) at any of the Nominet .uk roundtable meetings or the UK registrar meeting in London or seen any views from her about the Nominet .uk proposal?

I have not but did come across this when looking into .wales Nominet is trying to launch:

http://www.walesonline.co.uk/business-in-wales/business-news/2012/12/19/baroness-fritchie-has-time-for-everybody-s-troubles-91466-32454173/

'Her mission was to launch a consultation to help shape the new internet domains for Wales, and in doing this she told business leaders that money made from new Welsh domain names will be reinvested in Wales.'

Does anyone really believe that .wales will make money? I think we'll (i.e. existing .uk domain owners) will be subsidising this for many years to come. I'd like to see a full costing for this exercise. Is there one? including cost of registering the .wales domain, cost of staffing, pension costs, office space and annual charge for facilities, etc. I think its no co-incidence that .uk is being proposed at the same time. They need money to subsidise projects like this.

 

[ScottJ]

Just read this on the i.co.uk site. Has this been discussed on here? Has anyone got a link to the old release on this as I'd like to see it.

"We also just picked up this little snippet from an old release concerning the Short Domain consultation Nominet undertook back in 2010 prior to an issue relating to a little over 2,800 short domains. “Nominet also wrote to the holders of approximately 20,000 trademarks corresponding to the character sets potentially subject to release ……” So they contacted directly 20,000 POTENTIAL stakeholders as part of that consultation but not the ACTUAL 10,276,759 stakeholders this go round. hmmmmmmm"

and the link is here:
http://i.co.uk/?p=11797

Yep, I can confirm that I got a letter from Nominet to me as a trademark holder to inform me of the up and coming short domain release strings, don't have a copy here but they certainly sent out snail mail letter to some trademark holders myself included found in the IPO database - it's not like they were canvassing current customers that time either.

 

[Nigel]

Thank for that info Scott and confirming that contact was by snail mail. Certainly a costly and time consuming exercise for Nominet.

 

[tifosi]

Anybody find that a touch ironic!

No offence Scott, but the kind of Trademark manipulation used to gain (and lose) some x & xx.co.uk domains - while lauded at the time for being innovative or for their sheer gall - on the scale that a direct.uk implementaton would be an unmittigated disaster!

 

[Stephen]

.wales – please fill in the Nominet consultation

I intend to start a new Acorn thread to encourage Acorn members to complete the Nominet .wales consultation and was wondering if anybody following this thread had any observations about it, before I created it?


The Nominet consultation for .wales and .cymru closes on Thursday 28th February 2013, so please act now, to have your say.

http://www.domainforwales.org.uk/content/have-your-say

Nominet is consulting on its proposals for the new internet domains for Wales. The plans for .cymru and .wales domains have huge potential to provide significant cultural, economic and social benefits in Wales.

The question you have to ask yourself is should Nominet be doing this at all?

If NO please let Nominet know.

If the answer is YES, what are the implications for Nominet and the potential for the draining of its resources and unrecovered costs if not handled transparently and properly.

Nominet to get to the stage they have would have in my estimation committed over £1 million in ICANN fees, Impact study, Cost of Nominet staff and Management in the proposal, consultation and planning for .wales.

Why didn’t Nominet persuade the Welsh government to foot the upfront bills and let them recover it from future domain sales?

Should they persuade the Welsh government to take over the .wales project and repay Nominet’s costs to date?

Will the Nominet upfront costs (£1m) be recovered from domain sales, before they start giving it away to be ringfenced for welsh society?

What is the basis that Nominet future costs will be passed over to .wales?

What consideration was given to .wales.uk and .cymru.uk which would have costed a fraction of the cost?

What if .wales makes a loss?

Nominet state .wales will benefit welsh economy but every winner there is a loser and that will in the majority of cases would be other parts of the UK, as no new wealth would be created. So nominet would just be helping to redistribute business within the Uk favouring welsh businesses?

Is it legal under EU law to have the restrictions they intend to impose?

Was part of the £5 million Nominet spend on infastructure upgrade at the end of last year, in any way to do with .wales and will that ever be recovered?

The surplus (if any) from .wales will be given to welsh charities/society only according to Nominet, not for the greater good of the UK namespace.

What rights does any .co.uk or .org.uk owner have to get the .wales domain that would correspond with their current domain?

Good news that DNSSEC is only optional for .wales and no malware protection is suggested as opposed to the compulsory usage of both in the .uk proposal!

Bad news 4 auction phases? (if split premium and landrush)

 

[Nigel]

Yes I agree with your idea to start a new thread on this. Why are nominet sticking their oar in here. Why should they subsidise a competing domain name? It is certainly not for the benefit of Nominet's existing registrants whose money they have already used to start this project.

Personally I can't see the domain will be of any great assistance to the Welsh economy anyway - it will be mainly defensive registrations i.e. just another domain you have to register to protect your brand. So just more cost and hassle. Yes they'll be a few nice ones like holidays.wales but apart from tourism, I think a lot of businesses will not want to trade from a .wales. It should have been left to the Welsh assembly to run this. I don't suppose they wanted to stump up the money to pay up front and for the ongoing costs. Nominet have to give us full costings on this. No normal business would launch an expensive project like this without giving shareholders an idea of the cost involved.

 

[Edwin]

.wales is a sideshow to the direct.uk main event, so a different thread is definitely more productive than continuing that discussion in this one. Worth noting in passing that the .wales consultation doesn't allow people to say "no" to .wales as a concept, even as the last part of the last question

 

[Stephen]

.wales

thanks for comments - have started new thread .wales under Nominet General section

If you have the time Nigel and Edwin could you please post your .wales comments again to get it started.

 

[Stephen]

1 & 1 - SiteLock security

Todays press release about UK namespace security, maybe the big UK registrars, are going to use security as a USP for their own offerings?

http://www.myhostnews.com/2013/01/59-cent-consumers-concerned-security-business-websites/

So malware maybe not so important for .uk, although I don't see DNSSEC being mentioned.

 

[philiporchard]

Todays press release about UK namespace security, maybe the big UK registrars, are going to use security as a USP for their own offerings?

http://www.myhostnews.com/2013/01/59-cent-consumers-concerned-security-business-websites/

So malware maybe not so important for .uk, although I don't see DNSSEC being mentioned.

I think it's just a bit of marketing form 1and1 about their web building software... there are lots of issues regarding online transactions... Many of which are down to what business do to protect users' data etc and how well built their systems are.

Often it is carelessness on the part of users too. The number of emails I receive to some of my city domains, particularly Coventry, that include passwords and usernames for bank accounts! - Just careless.

I don't think another addition of similar domains will help the email situation either!

 

[anthony]

Come on Daniel Kelleher, you log in to Acorn almost every day having a read but never posting, could you consider trotting along the office and asking Lesley Cowley if she would have it put back in place on Nominet's web site?