.UK Announced

[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?

 

[Stephen]

20,000 explanation

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nigel
......."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

I asked Eleanor Bradley

As regards the .uk proposal, Nominet have repeatedly stated they could not contact the registrants by email of the 10+ million UK due to legal issues to do with the Data Protection Act raised by your internal legal team, could you please clarify why it was possible (if it is true) that Nominet could contact 20,000 trademark holders previously?

She has repsonded with a resonable explanation on the legal side, but should Nominet still have made more effort with domain owners/businesses for .uk

Dear Stephen

We contacted the trademark holders you refer using publicly available contact information, rather than data provided to us pursuant to a contract (as is the case with .uk domain name registrants). I understand the data protection provisions apply to email contact, a physical letter was sent to the trademark holders.

Regards
Eleanor Bradley

I wonder why Nominet didn't write to all UK trademark holders for .uk consultation?

 

[mojoco]

"We contacted the trademark holders you refer using publicly available contact information"


Why is it acceptable to use publicly available contact information for trademark holders but not domain registrants who have their contact info listed in the whois record?

 

[Edwin]

"We contacted the trademark holders you refer using publicly available contact information"


Why is it acceptable to use publicly available contact information for trademark holders but not domain registrants who have their contact info listed in the whois record?

Because one was perceived as likely to bring a cash windfall to Nominet (more bidders to contest the short domain auctions) and the other was anticipated to produce further opposition to direct.uk.

Oh, sorry, was I supposed to be making up some sort of nonsensical excuse like Nominet do?

 

[TinkyWinky]

Why is it acceptable to use publicly available contact information for trademark holders but not domain registrants who have their contact info listed in the whois record?

Because Nominet say so - and we all respect the quality and calibre of the board and their sound legal advice and knowledge of everything in the UK online world :???:

 

[Nigel]

Because one was perceived as likely to bring a cash windfall to Nominet (more bidders to contest the short domain auctions) and the other was anticipated to produce further opposition to direct.uk.

Oh, sorry, was I supposed to be making up some sort of nonsensical excuse like Nominet do?

Absolutely Edwin

Notice how Nominet have never mentioned the fact that the Data Protection Act does not apply to Limited Companies. There are 1.3m Ltd companies in the UK. A large percentage of those will be trading with a .co.uk domain. So why didn't Nominet contact them?

 

[Edwin]

Notice how Nominet have never mentioned the fact that the Data Protection Act does not apply to Limited Companies. There are 1.3m Ltd companies in the UK. A large percentage of those will be trading with a .co.uk domain. So why didn't Nominet contact them?

I refer the Honourable Gentleman to the answer I made a moment ago

 

[Stephen]

whois v ipo data

"We contacted the trademark holders you refer using publicly available contact information"

Why is it acceptable to use publicly available contact information for trademark holders but not domain registrants who have their contact info listed in the whois record?

Nominet are bound by the rules of Whois like everybody else.

Check out a return "whois" request at the bottom:

This WHOIS information is provided for free by Nominet UK the central registry
for .uk domain names. This information and the .uk WHOIS are:

Copyright Nominet UK 1996 - 2013.

You may not access the .uk WHOIS or use any data from it except as permitted
by the terms of use available in full at http://www.nominet.org.uk/whois, which
includes restrictions on: (A) use of the data for advertising, or its
repackaging, recompilation, redistribution or reuse (B) obscuring, removing
or hiding any or all of this notice and (C) exceeding query rate or volume
limits. The data is provided on an 'as-is' basis and may lag behind the
register. Access may be withdrawn or restricted at any time.

I did phone the Intellectual Propert Office (ipo.gov.uk) to check if you can scrape their data and use it for marketing purposes,
as could not see any small print on the website preventing that action.

They suprisingly stated "open government license" conditions apply and would not elaborate further, if it was or not allowed to use the details for marketing.

However Nominet have the address and email and a contract with the "registrant" of UK domains and the terms of that contract in my opinion would allow nominet to contact registrants about the .uk proposal.

 

[Stephen]

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.

If it is possible to post the contents of the letter, especially if they mentioned they got your details from the ipo.gov.uk website?

 

[markb]

If for some reason nominet ignore everyones comments and went ahead unchallenged with the direct.uk implementation, do you think they will email all existing .org.uk and .co.uk domain holders to let them know about the auctions for corresponding domains? We know they have stated that direct.uk is a totally new product (even though its aimed at businesses who already own .co.uk domains) and has nothing to do with existing domain registrants.

 

[Nigel]

If for some reason nominet ignore everyones comments and went ahead unchallenged with the direct.uk implementation, do you think they will email all existing .org.uk and .co.uk domain holders to let them know about the auctions for corresponding domains? We know they have stated that direct.uk is a totally new product (even though its aimed at businesses who already own .co.uk domains) and has nothing to do with existing domain registrants.

I asked them that question. Here's what Eleanor Bradley COO of Nominet replied to me

"We have just completed the consultation on direct.uk, this is a genuine consultation and no decision has been taken on whether to proceed with direct.uk in its current or an alternative form. Similarly, no decision has been taken on how registrants of existing .uk domain names will be made aware of the launch of direct.uk if the decision is to proceed."