Deleting.co.uk RIP

[wazzer]

apologies if this has no relevance, but if you got to the nominet website, and search for deleting.co.uk... you get this... Deleting.co.uk" - the first UK drop list service. This site is still the only one of itskind in the UK domain market. As a result of names being listed on Deleting.co.uk, hundreds of extradomain registrations take place each week.This year, at the age ....


Link:http://www.nominet.org.uk/special/s...irectoryNames=all&searchString=deleting.co.uk

 

[Whois-Search]

apologies if this has no relevance, but if you got to the nominet website, and search for deleting.co.uk... you get this... Deleting.co.uk" - the first UK drop list service. This site is still the only one of itskind in the UK domain market. As a result of names being listed on Deleting.co.uk, hundreds of extradomain registrations take place each week.This year, at the age ....


Link:http://www.nominet.org.uk/special/s...irectoryNames=all&searchString=deleting.co.uk

This is due to my rather naive board election statement in 2006:
http://www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/19710_2006_Board_elections.pdf

However it looks like the search is indexing an old file and renaming it "Music for Youth".

 

[sneezycheese]

Why Now?!

So why only now AFTER Andrew has been elected to the PAB do Nominet get 'shirty'?

It's not if they've not been FULLY AWARE!!! of the service he provided on deleting.co.uk (see below)...

http://www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/17860_2006_Board_elections.pdf

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/18/nominet_icann_boards/

As has been said earlier - something "smells" very wrong about this, IN PARTICULAR the 'Undertaking' they have demanded he agree to!

A section of the community has been very much damaged by this and Nominet will have known this - Maybe this shows us Nominet's 'True Colours' on the subject of 'Domaining/Dropcatching'.

It sickens me the way they have treated Andrew and feel they should be ashamed of themselves, but I fear their ego's will get in the way of even that!

Regards,

Sneezy.

 

[retired_member11]

It doesn't matter where the domain names come from, they're words from a dictonary compiled from centuries of the English language merged with a .co.uk at the end. Are Nominet claming rights to that now? The English language?

As you've stated and as we've known, the only data you were possibly holding was tagholder, as that didn't look like direct read outs from whois and would eventually have timed out I'm sure and dates, well I'm not sure, only you and several technicals will know how you did it but your explanation sounds plausable.

I'm concerned how they just appear to be making presumptions about the data you were holding, "it was clear" not all that clear from where I am. It still doesn't make sense. What next pro domainer's doors knocked down at five in the morning, you're not telling me they don't have whois data on their pcs. I know I do. Mostly me own though from PRSS.

So when they called you in to say you were being suspended and went against their own terms and told you to delete questionable material, did they actually bring in the technical director, Jay Daley, sit you down and ask you how the processes went together and the technical director agreed what you were doing was storing all this data? or are you saying one lone solicitor called you in and claimed to be the fountain of all knowledge?

What exactly did you store and was it only tag holder names next to domains in the database? If that's your only crime then the punishment hardly fits. You did Nominet a service and they have failed to understand the spirit of the internet in which it has grown to become. A vast API and info sharing which enables end user products to be developed and released and utilised over and above what any sole company and entity can possibly acheive on their jack jones.

Cheers
Lee

Domains ARE the digital privatisation of language.

England in the fourteenth century was a place where power and influence was predominantly held by those who could read and write, and it was almost exclusively the church that controlled the learning of reading and writing.

Is Nominet the church of the 21st century?

 

[retired_member11]

The letter I received on Monday said they had told Member and Registrar Services to terminate it and if I tried to use it again I would be done for "hacking".

I confirmed with Member and Registrar Services on the 23rd May 2007 that my DAC has been indeed cancelled via email.

Decimation next! How draconian.

 

[bb99]

Is Nominet the church of the 21st century?

Yes - from Jay's own words:

As I've said before, ad nauseam, Nominet is a very broad church.

 

[retired_member11]

Is it right to infer that Nominet will only act regarding an alleged .uk database abuse when it receives a complaint from a third party?

Clearly Nominet was aware of the service offered by deleting.co.uk long before the complaint was received and yet seemingly did nothing about it... until now. Surely that amounted to tacit approval of the service.

Jay Daley...you knew of deleting.co.uk, no?

 

[mattonline]

That is something I really don't want to get involved with however this is starting to turn into the rights of every member and not just about myself.

If you don't want to get involved with it (court) then you don't have to, but i'm sure if you did go ahead with it you will have the backing of every member of this site.

Just look how much interest has been shown in this situation almost 5000 views, almost 200 posts and its been open 22-05-2007, -25th at present thats 3 days.

This is alot of bad publicity for nominet, i wonder if they have seen this thread/ monitoring it?

 

[domainking]

deleting

Andrew has run that site for ages and no complaints have been made
Im sure would be intresting to see who complained about his service

you have got to ask is it a vendetta against andrew for the questions he asks
personally i think it is. let nominet come clean and tell andrew who made the complaint.

I would be willing to donate ££££ to andrew to take the person to court who complained about this service

 

[retired_member9]

I'd speculate that those who had motives and interest to shut down deleting would fit to the following 'catcher' description:

1. catches from medium to low quality names.
2. catches in high volumes.
3. gets constantly beaten by hordes of people who use (used) deleting to load their automaton/dac scripts as their primary source.
4. doesn't want publicity of his tag appearing in catch results.

 

[stender]

Lets all go and protest outside their offices. The press will get wind and nominet will be shown up as the inconsistent monopoly that they are.

Vote of no confidence from me!

 

[Fold]

The easist, most comprehensive and most lengthy option is to get the .com zone file, replace the .com with .co.uk and scan the list to extract all the domains that are already registered along with the relevant dates.

Where does one obtain this zone file?

 

[Whois-Search]

you have got to ask is it a vendetta against andrew for the questions he asks

Nominet say the complaint was an email and that it was a "general complaint about whether Nominet approves of deleting.co.uk".....

I don't mind people complaining about deleting.co.uk as long as Nominet deals with it in a fair way.

I feel this harsh reaction by Nominet has something to do with my recent comments on Nom-Steer and at the AGM regarding the Governance Consultation.

http://www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/19579_Andrew_Bennett.pdf

 

[Whois-Search]

Where does one obtain this zone file?

http://www.verisign.com/information-services/naming-services/com-net-registry/page_001052.html

 

[Whois-Search]

Many of you will know this already however for those who don't....

This is the "data" you get back when you use the DAC:

internet.co.uk,Y,N,N,1996-07-30,2006-07-30,1,NOMINET

You can see what these mean on the table on:

http://www.nic.uk/other/dac/instruct/

So....

1. 40,000 suspended domain names (status derived from the DAC)

That means the 40,000 names had "Y" on the 3rd set of letters. - Neither "Y" or the word "suspended" was published on the website.

2. Publishing the number of days suspended (using renewal date from the DAC)

The renewal date is the 2nd date in the data "2006-07-30" - this date was not stored however the number of days from that date to todays date was and republished.

3. Publishing the TAGs on the "who got what" pages (taken from the DAC)

That was the TAG on the end of the data e.g. "NOMINET" and was published on the website however we only found 63,563 caught names since 27th September 2005.

We believed all three of these to be a "insubstantial" part of the registry.

 

[bb99]

We believed all three of these to be a "insubstantial" part of the registry.

And surely the average reasonable man on the Clapham omnibus would agree? Even if he didn't, he surely would if you take away number three (ie who caught what tags). As previously stated: 40,000 domain names represents less than one percent of the >5m names registered with Nominet.

 

[Edwin]

Perhaps Nominet's point is that the 40,000 names represented 100% of the suspended names from the overall database, which is a pretty significant percentage! I'm just speculating since they're not commenting...

 

[Whois-Search]

Perhaps Nominet's point is that the 40,000 names represented 100% of the suspended names from the overall database, which is a pretty significant percentage! I'm just speculating since they're not commenting...

Each month there are about 50,000 domains not renewed:

http://www.nic.uk/intelligence/statistics/renewals/

MAR-07 59,994

FEB-07 58,399

JAN-07 54,478

So if the max suspended period is 99 days.... there must be about 150,000 suspended names at anyone time?

 

[Edwin]

Ok, so that's still 30%.

The most plausible reason for shutting you down is an over-reaction on their part.

However, another reason may be that from their perspective what you were reproducing was a substantial amount of the most valuable part of the Whois database. After all, anyone can check individual domains for owership/contact info - but only someone with massive wordlists and a large amount of computing power can compile the type of comprehensive "suspended" sub-list.

Not sure if any kind of compromise is even theoretically possible at this point, but if only you could get some perspective on their precise gripe it might help to make a case...

 

[Nigel]

I think the PRSS that Nominet operate is a far greater abuse of domain data. At a touch of a button a competitor, or simply a malicious person can quite legitimately download and store details of your entire domain portfolio. Nominet never asked our company for permission to publish our confidential information in this way and it is obvious that the data could be used to maliciously target your domains (scam emails, bids, etc). Yet Nominet went out of their way to make the PRSS available despite the real threat to our businesses. They say:

Public Register Search Service
Introduction

The Public Register Search Service (PRSS) allows you to search the register for domain names that are registered to a particular legal entity and/or of a similar name. The PRSS is accessible via a web interface and allows you to search using wildcards. A maximum of 21,000 results can be viewed per week. These results can be viewed in batches.

You can store regular searches as favourites and a history is kept of all searches for quick and easy access

21,000 results a week! So hundreds of thousands of domains theoretically.
So why the different attitudes to data. Andrew's list was free wheras the PRSS generates £400 to Nominet for every subscriber. Andrew's list was a favourite of small internet businesses and individuals wheras Nominet's PRSS is a favourite of sizeable law firms and corporations. Enough said.

So if you're going to be sensitive about data Nominet, then you had better shut down your PRSS immediately. And then do the decent thing and tell Andrew the identity of the complainant. If the complainant asked for anonymity then you shouldn't have even considered the complaint.