.UK Announced

[Edwin]

All this speculating about what and what may not be allowed at the release stage (and rules of registration later), is getting us nowhere. The proposal is directed at closing the door on domainers in the UK space , as much as about new revenue

Not when you do the math with a few estimates of what the takeup of .uk might be (compared to the existing pool of 10 million *.uk registrations) and compare that to Nominet's current annual revenue of about £25 million (and £3,000,000+ windfall from the short domain auction last year). They're going to be buried under an avalanche of cash in any "realistic" scenario one can project.

Sure, there will be champagne flowing in some quarters at the idea that domainers will be ground under the wheels of this plan, but with the eye-watering sums involved and the transparently obvious lack of business need or rationale for the launch, the primary motivation MUST be financial. The rest is just "beneficial collateral damage".

 

[Bailey]

I disagree Edwin.

The UK lauch is not about to be a duplicate of .co.uk as you seem to imagine. The plus side is that .co.uk will still hold a reasonable if not substantial amount of ground for some-time to come

 

[websaway]

And no accounting for the costs to each business of rebranding (if they even manage to secure "their" .uk) - every single place their URL appears needs to be changed, and that will cost from £thousands for a very small company to £millions for a larger firm.

Multiply that by 4 million "actual" businesses on .co.uk (that's the approximate count based on Nominet's industry reports) and you're talking about many, many £billions in additional unnecessary costs.

I can see the launch of .UK elbowing out "New Coke" as the gold standard of marketing failures for generations to come.

But no logical argument will stop them because the booty is so attractive.
Similar to what happened with the banks in the 80's and 90's the possibillity of huge rewards becomes the only objective and clouds logical argument .

Who would care about the small self employed sole proprietor who has branded his small business for a decade through his co.uk and now finds that someone likes his idea so much that in June 2012 ( when so many ltd companies were being formed )they trademarked his name and registered a ltd company of the same title, 10 years after he registered his co.uk.

Leaving the booty aside, this will cause far more problems than it seeks to solve.

 

[websaway]

I disagree Edwin.

The UK lauch is not about to be a duplicate of .co.uk as you seem to imagine. The plus side is that .co.uk will still hold a reasonable if not substantial amount of ground for some-time to come

I already notice far less television advertisements that include the co.uk term.
As you know companies tend to put things on hold in times of uncertainty.
And if I've read it correctly nominet are offering registrars half the advertising budget for promoting the .uk (cherry)

 

[Bailey]

good points Wedsaway. I'm not trying to minimise the issues of the UK launch and its conflicts. The powers that be have seen this as a long term solution to those complaining of dilution.and under mining of the UK brand by the systems and processes that allowed it to happen.

As and when .UK comes out , it's going to be a reasonably stringent process to comply with . It will indeed need sweetners to the registration service providers. Purely because it won't give that shopping cart with 10, 20, 30 names in the total

 

[Bailey]

Another point worth mentioning again, is the £20 is an "Estimated" BASE cost for registration. expect to see that rise upwards. I wouldn't be surprised to see this as at least an 'Initial' £70-£80 plus market available price - And No those with a verifiable claim to the UK wont be complaining.

*subsequent renewals may well be a lot lower

 

[Stephen]

Domainer meeting

Is anybody aware of a meeting pre or post the Nominet .uk meeting Tuesday 6 November 2012 for registrars in London, 10.30 – 13.00 that domainers may attend to help find a way forward?

Rgds
Stephen

 

[retired_member27]

By charging £20 per year to register Nominet hope they will drive a lot of large portfolio owners out of business how many have the £20,000 per year needed for every thousand names they own.

Its also looking more likely that Nominet will come under some form of government control to mop up the extra revenue this new venture will make.

I also don't believe Nominet will allow drop catching to continue with the new release so ending the monster that they created in the first place.

They are never going to allow the current owners to have grandfather rights as they are looking for change.

Nominet has disliked domain portfolio owners from the very beginning why are people now so suddenly surprised?

Absolutely spot on, couldn't have said it better myself.

 

[Edwin]

Speaking from a domainers perspective, Nominet would do well to look at all the shit that we buy and transfer between ourselves and ask what would their business look like if we all walked away from it tomorrow. Domain investors doesn't just mean your TagNames and Edwins, there's lots of the general public that own just one or two domains as lottery tickets and this release devalues those names and I just wonder if it might all blow up in Nominet's face. I for sure will be deleting around 100 of my 150 domains if it goes ahead.

Not at £20/year vs £2.50/year. By padding the base price to such an absurd level, they can get it very, very wrong indeed and still rake in money like it's going out of fashion. For every one .uk registered, 9 .co.uk would have to be dropped for Nominet to lose on the trade, and the odds of that happening are so vanishingly small as to be zero for all practical purposes.

43% of all domains are in use for business websites (Nominet Domain Industry Report) so it's only negative movement (if any) in the other 57% that would cause any decrease in renewal income.

 

[Sound]

Nominet revenue stream will sky rocket from the change leaving them with a surplus of tens of millions for the cash hungry Tory government to mop up.

I don't understand why some people have become so worried about large corporations losing their domains in the change, the examples I have seen like bank.co.uk are not going to worry the small business owner.

Why don't some people open up and say I own this generic domain someone has the TM and I risk losing it when the change happens? I have yet to see one example of this on the forum.

We are also only in the consultation stage of the change and nothing is set in stone. I expect nominet will change some off the more contentious issues going forward.

 

[Edwin]

I don't understand why some people have become so worried about large corporations losing their domains in the change, the examples I have seen like bank.co.uk are not going to worry the small business owner.

Because the change in its current form is B-A-D for absolutely everyone except A) Nominet and B) large registrars, and large corporations are the ones with lawyers already on the payroll who can force the right sort of changes and accommodations IF they get on the issue in time.

 

[Sound]

Edwin all the examples I have seen are from large corporations who as you say are big enough and ugly enough to fight their own battles.

Why don't you post just one domain that you will lose out to a TM holder when the change happens.

 

[grantw]

Why don't some people open up and say I own this generic domain someone has the TM and I risk losing it when the change happens? I have yet to see one example of this on the forum.

I Paid 4 figures for unsigned.co.uk - there are 2 TMs on it. I can probably pick out hundreds of similar examples from my own portfolio. It's obvious to me that people are going to point out premium examples as they're the ones that the .co.uk owners will probably have spent large amounts of money on, but there are an insane amount of people/companies that don't have TMs on their term/companyname.co.uk and will lose out.

Grant

 

[Edwin]

Why don't you post just one domain that you will lose out to a TM holder when the change happens.

Map.co.uk, Maps.co.uk, Cambridge.co.uk, Britain.co.uk. That's in 30 seconds off the top of my head.

 

[Sound]

Maps.co.uk, Cambridge.co.uk, Britain.co.uk. That's in 30 seconds off the top of my head.

I Paid 4 figures for unsigned.co.uk - there are 2 TMs on it. I can probably pick out hundreds of similar examples from my own portfolio. It's obvious to me that people are going to point out premium examples as they're the ones that the .co.uk owners will probably have spent large amounts of money on, but there are an insane amount of people/companies that don't have TMs on their term/companyname.co.uk and will lose out.

Grant

Thank you Grant and Edwin
At last people can have a proper debate about something that impacts on them rather than play fantasy domains.

Would you not agree that just because someone has a TM will not mean they are looking to acquire the .uk domain when it becomes available.

I would imagine that lots of TM owners have very little interest in domains.

 

[grantw]

Would you not agree that just because someone has a TM will not mean they are looking to acquire the .uk domain when it becomes available.

That may be true, if you look at the LL auctions there weren't that many TM holders that took advantage of their right to buy the domain. I imagine this change is gradually going to get a lot more publicity than the LL release though.

Even if they don't under the current proposal you're still potentially fighting it out with 2 other extension owners, company name owners etc..

Grant

 

[getmein]

The problem is that a holder of a generic domain, where someone else holds a ™ might not even get a chance to protect their investment/goodwill in their .co.uk.

The second problem, is that if owners of .org.uk, me.uk all get to participate in the .uk auction on the same terms the owners of .org.uk/me.uk will likely have acquired a golden ticket to the auction at a fraction of the cost of the .co.uk holder. The only real winner from the auction process will be nominet.

 

[grantw]

the owners of .org.uk/me.uk will likely have acquired a golden ticket to the auction at a fraction of the cost of the .co.uk holder.

I've got a boat load of generic .org.uk domains if anyone's looking for a cheapish entry ticket

Grant

 

[Edwin]

The second problem, is that if owners of .org.uk, me.uk all get to participate in the .uk auction on the same terms the owners of .org.uk/me.uk will likely have acquired a golden ticket to the auction at a fraction of the cost of the .co.uk holder. The only real winner from the auction process will be nominet.

Absolutely spot on.

 

[domainseller200]

Could some please clarify something for me in a hypothetical situation.

If I owned 'loans.co.uk' but I did not have a TM for it, I understand I would lose out to anyone with a TM in this field for that exact word.

But of if there was no 'EXACT' TM for 'loans' but there are 151 TM's where 'loans' is contained in the TM (say for examples Quick Loans) does that mean they have a TM for 'loans' and can go for the .uk domain if they wanted ?

Hope it makes sense. Thanks