Nominet's price rise will cost businesses over £200 million extra in the next decade

[ian]

I'm also not sure I personally concur that .uk is a simply a national asset.

Whaaaaat? Towing the party line I see! Nominet have full unrestricted access to controlling the .uk domain space, they should be regulated on that basis.

 

[spiderspider]

I'm also not sure I personally concur that .uk is a simply a national asset.

Then it must be French! Quick, sell Nominet to EDF and then all will be OK.

Your spade worn out yet?

 

[martin-s]

I'm also not sure I personally concur that .uk is a simply a national asset.

Factually speaking, you could be right, that it's hard to list something as an asset when you don't own or fully control it.

However, in reality, .uk isn't ever going to be re-delegated, certainly as long as Nominet focuses on doing a good job.

 

[Stephen]

UK Government does have the power to take 100% full control of .UK

Factually speaking, you could be right, that it's hard to list something as an asset when you don't own or fully control it.

However, in reality, .uk isn't ever going to be re-delegated, certainly as long as Nominet focuses on doing a good job.

It came out in the UK consultations that the UK Government does have the power to take 100% full control of UK if it considers Nominet not fit for purpose.

Stephen

 

[foz]

So an extra 200 staff per year for all those blue sky projects.

 

[jasman]

In a house which has staff, the cook may be in charge of the kitchen but if she ever refuses to cook what her master has ordered, the master (or his butler) will come downstairs and boot her out. Do you think if there was a stand off between the UK government and IANA, that IANA would win? They are merely the technical skivvies looking after aspects of the network for the governments.

If IANA ever attempted to re-delegate .uk against the wishes of the UK government, the issue would immediately be escalated way above IANA into the ranks of UK - US government diplomacy. It is almost inconceivable that the US government would stand by IANA doing such a thing because the UK and US have good relations and such a move would be potentially catastrophic to the UK economy. But even if they did, the UK government would surely act quickly to superimpose their own duplicate copy of the previous .uk namespace so that UK business would continue with as little upset as possible. They would then call an emergency meeting with the international community to recommend switching over to a new international Internet infrastructure body to replace IANA and I suspect seeing how IANA had held one of the world's major economies to ransom, most countries would fear similar treatment (and welcome an opportunity to wrest an important international resource from out of the US's hands), jump on board and IANA would be finished with days.

But all this is beside the point. The .uk namesepace is de facto under the UK government's control, .uk is de facto a national UK asset and Nominet have been entrusted with managing it. For many years they have been charging more than is necessary for wholesale prices, building up substantial cash reserves and now they have the gall to hike prices up 50%. This is clearly the behaviour of a monopoly, not a non profit acting in the public interest.