The great big .uk Rights of Registration thread!

[ian]

No sign of the main registrars on test again. Seems they don't need to know if their software is going to work...

Their software is labelled "made by Nominet" and comes with a 1 second advantage.

Usual tags testing. You can certainly see a pattern of who's got themselves ready!

 

[Siusaidh]

Of my original list of 20 'target' .uks, which I've taken steps to try to secure next week, 2 were registered at the weekend, 1 was registered yesterday, and 1 was registered some time between 1am and 6am this morning.

In my earliest list I had 3 others, but they were all registered two weeks ago by Fasthosts, which I certainly found frustrating.

That said, they also registered 2 good .uk domains that I wasn't eligible for, because I had the .org.uk and someone else had the .co.uk, and yet they offered them to me. Weird.

Next Sunday night will be like the night before Christmas. I am really curious to see how things pan out. I have a feeling my 'stocking' will still be pretty empty by the end of the week.

I will be happy if I get 6 out of my remaining 16 'targets'. I suspect it may only be 2 or 3.

I obtain domains for fun and for personal websites, not for investment, so it's not life or death for me.

My assumption is that the financially strong registrars will sweep up many of the best names next week. What will be interesting (for me) is that I have 50 other domains I find interesting, but wasn't prepared to invest excess time on, and I just don't know the level at which next week's registrations will tail off.

Although this is just a hobby for me, domains have sometimes helped me financially. I was only able to financially survive when I was a nursing student because someone here bought a .uk I'd registered years before. I am a nurse today because one of you paid me £5000. It was amazing.

I am extremely cynical about the registry/registrar industry. I feel the process of this particular roll-out has not been respected, and the argument that registrars should be allowed to blanket register unrequested .uk domains "to give people longer to protect their .co.uk names" I regard as nonsense. The process gave people FIVE years to do that, and why have the process at all if you're going to fail in the proposal that was made that unclaimed names will be open for registration by the public after that?

My cynicism goes back to earlier disgraces like the abuse of the .info and .biz roll outs by registrars mass-registering thousands of the best domains using fake copyright claims. ICANN were so 'laissez-faire' about those abuses, and I feel Nominet's attitude is similar with this roll out. The offer of free registration of .uk domains for one year was like an open invitation to people to mass registrar names. Why wouldn't they? It was like an open goal.

 

[armistice]

Their software is labelled "made by Nominet" and comes with a 1 second advantage.

Usual tags testing. You can certainly see a pattern of who's got themselves ready!

Interesting to see a usual suspect testing with 150 requests <given i logged 148 registrations in the first minute). Wonder if that will be the same when the final tiers are allocated. £90k is a lot to pony up, even if you do get it back.

 

[timter51]

Interesting to see a usual suspect testing with 150 requests <given i logged 148 registrations in the first minute). Wonder if that will be the same when the final tiers are allocated. £90k is a lot to pony up, even if you do get it back.

Somebody registered 148 domains?! I could barely find 12 today that I would go after

 

[RobM]

Lol I think there was 6 or something 2 letter domains as well as a 1 letter. You need better lists Tim

 

[timter51]

Hmmmm... you could be right Fuck it, I've only got 6 per minute anyway

 

[Whois-Search]

We just checked 5000 names on the testbed

Result Today:

2066 SLAINE
356 OSTASHKO
180 WEBCON
153 REGISTER-DOT-COM
100 UDOMAINNAME-US
95 POLLER
89 JSMITH
84 REGISTER
80 NSI-US
76 SRSPLUS
73 SERVITOR
63 ELIFE
28 CENTRASERVE
24 WOOD
23 DROPPED
18 VAUGHAN
17 CREGISP
16 LBE
10 NETISTRAR
9 ATST
7 IPT
7 DOMEINWINKEL
7 CATCH22
4 SUPERSTOR
4 LUKEC
4 DTDOMAINS
3 TRIFEGA
3 SCHILLMANN-DE
3 SCHAKALOV
3 MIXACTIVITY
3 HKOSTOVA
2 PREMIUM
2 NETPRESTO
2 MDOBCHEVA
2 IGEORGIEVA
1 TOOLDOMAINS
1 CECOSOLUTIONS
1 ABNAME-SE

 

[timter51]

Mind blown... I'm obviously not seeing the value in .uk domains that other people are seeing! But fair play to them for going all out.

 

[Whois-Search]

Yes seems to be many new registrars:

SCHAKALOV - Simeon Chakalov
HKOSTOVA - Hristina Kostova
MIXACTIVITY - Tatyana Karataneva
MDOBCHEVA - Maria Dobcheva
IGEORGIEVA - Ivelina Georgieva

See https://registrars.nominet.uk/uk-namespace/registrar-agreement/list-of-registrars/

Even the top one is new from Ireland:

SLAINE - Slaine Domains Ltd
Incorporated on: 15 February 2019
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11829250

 

[jmcc]

I am extremely cynical about the registry/registrar industry. I feel the process of this particular roll-out has not been respected, and the argument that registrars should be allowed to blanket register unrequested .uk domains "to give people longer to protect their .co.uk names" I regard as nonsense. The process gave people FIVE years to do that, and why have the process at all if you're going to fail in the proposal that was made that unclaimed names will be open for registration by the public after that?

The last five years, in domain name terms, have been quite unusual in that the new gTLDs have occupied a lot of the attention. The LONDON, WALES, SCOT, CYMRU gTLDs have all taken some of that business. Unfortunately, they haven't gained significant presence in the market. Businesses generally put off having to register domain names when it is unnecessary and the five year protection period helped. The changing regulations also caused problems and some registrars may have been less than clear on these regulations leading to some registrants with prior rights thinking that they were ineligible to register .UK domain names.

My cynicism goes back to earlier disgraces like the abuse of the .info and .biz roll outs by registrars mass-registering thousands of the best domains using fake copyright claims. ICANN were so 'laissez-faire' about those abuses, and I feel Nominet's attitude is similar with this roll out. The offer of free registration of .uk domains for one year was like an open invitation to people to mass registrar names. Why wouldn't they? It was like an open goal.

Both those gTLDs had serious problems with bogus claims. But the ones that followed were largely self-inflicted. The .BIZ was intended to be a business gTLD but that changed when it couldn't get traction. The .INFO basically invented the boom and bust promotion model with free/discounted registrations. That went a long way towards destroying the credibility of the gTLD compared to .COM. Now, the main registration activitiy in both these gTLDs is heavily based on discounting.In terms of web usage and development (from May 2019 full gTLD web surveys), both of them have lower usage than .COM and ccTLDs.

gtld - Content - No Content - Templated Content - Redirects - No Site Response
BIZ 8.49% 27.20% 20.62% 21.22% 22.48%
INFO 8.74% 16.42% 29.71% 26.20% 18.93%

Templated Content is PPC parking, Sales and Affiliate Landing pages. No Content is essentially holding pages and 404/403 pages.

The .UK ccTLD is much better regulated than gTLDs and a lot of the problems that emerged with the new gTLDs have not affected it. The land grabs by registrars are an issue but they can and will spin it as protecting businesses from cybersquatting. In terms of domaining, it is actually a good thing because it spreads the interest over two years rather than a single year. Normally, a new TLD gets a boost in the first year, and a Junk Dump in the second. The echoes from the BIZ, INFO and EU land rushes were visible up to ten years afterwards.

Regards...jmcc

 

[martin-s]

Yes seems to be many new registrars

Your pre-reg at Netistrar didn't seem to be working for a name I tried today. Not sure if it's the reformatted results from Nominet causing it?

"blah.uk" has not been registered.

This domain name will become available for registration
as part of the rights of registration release process.
More information can be found on https://www.nominet.uk/reserved-uk-rights-faqs/

WHOIS lookup made at 17:53:21 25-Jun-2019

 

[jmcc]

Even the top one is new from Ireland:

SLAINE - Slaine Domains Ltd
Incorporated on: 15 February 2019
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/11829250

Isn't one of the main hosters in Ireland. Website (on the .com version of the domain name) suggests it is a domaining op.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Whois-Search]

Your pre-reg at Netistrar didn't seem to be working for a name I tried today. Not sure if it's the reformatted results from Nominet causing it?

Yes sorry we need to fix the rights checking now that Nominet have removed .uk rights (now returning unavailable) this morning. Will be fixed tomorrow now.

Isn't one of the main hosters in Ireland. Website (on the .com version of the domain name) suggests it is a domaining op.

He seems to be a customer of Blacknight:

https://domainbigdata.com/opes.com/mj/2zIP4szdFCGimExC4zH6Kw

 

[jmcc]

He seems to be a customer of Blacknight:

https://domainbigdata.com/opes.com/mj/2zIP4szdFCGimExC4zH6Kw

Yep. Blacknight is the largest Irish hoster. Register365 was bought by Namesco a few years ago. Just on the hosting side of things, there are about 33K .UK doms on Irish hosters but the number of Irish registered .UK domains would be higher. Eurid claims that there are around 40K .EU Irish registered doms but those figures are a bit iffy because of front companies and some brand protection companies using Irish offices/domicile. There are about 9.5K .EU doms on Irish hosters. Usage-wise, .EU is down at .BIZ levels in Ireland.

Regards...jmcc

 

[Whois-Search]

You see these five tags today:

100 UDOMAINNAME-US
80 REGISTER-DOT-COM
76 SRSPLUS
65 NSI-US
45 REGISTER

They are all owned by what’s now Web.com

(Used to be Register.com and Networksolutions.com)

Looks like five 45k-90k credit accounts to me ?

 

[ian]

You see these five tags today:

100 UDOMAINNAME-US
80 REGISTER-DOT-COM
76 SRSPLUS
65 NSI-US
45 REGISTER

They are all owned by what’s now Web.com

(Used to be Register.com and Networksolutions.com)

Looks like five 45k-90k credit accounts to me ?

How is that not an associated member according to Nominets own terms. If they all have 150 in their own right, we might as well all go home!

 

[philiporchard]

Hi Andrew.

Of those that you mentioned, how many of those would take a booking for a domain?

Thanks!

 

[Whois-Search]

Nominet members are only linked for voting under the voting rights policy (at the AGM).

Under the ROR release tiers each credit account (a tag with money in) can indeed have 150 requests if there is 90K in the tag account.

I can’t find a pre-order page on their brands Register.com and Networksolutions.com

However doesn’t Web.com own Snapnames.com now ?

https://www.globenewswire.com/news-...b-com-Announces-Acquisition-of-SnapNames.html

So we need to do some more digging there:

http://twitter.com/3MillionUK/status/1143605843608424448

 

[dee]

Can anyone point me to the drop schedule and test bed schedule please if possible. I cant find it.

 

[davedevelopment]

Mind blown... I'm obviously not seeing the value in .uk domains that other people are seeing! But fair play to them for going all out.

I'm surprised by a few. I'm not sure if I read it incorrectly, but it looked like someone put 35 euro prebids on nearly all of the lll.uk domains at Catch Tiger, even some of the more horrible combinations.