.UK overseer Nominet abandons its own charitable foundation

Whois-Search · Jan 19, 2018

Interesting piece by Kieren McCarthy today.

I think this paragraph sums up the situation:

The unilateral decision to effectively kill off the organization's charitable foundation, with no consultation of members, has further raised concerns that Haworth is running what is supposed to be a steward of the UK's internet space as an investment vehicle, using the revenue from over-inflated .uk domain prices to fund a personal interest in security software.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/01/19/nominet_abandons_charitable_trust/

Disclaimer: I was asked for a quote (see page 2) however I had no idea I was to be the only one to speak!

Edwin · Jan 19, 2018

This kind of nonsense is why I flat out refuse to have anything to do with Nominet policy-making any more (despite various semi-regular invitations to contribute). Many many times burnt, twice shy.

Life’s too short to waste on those who have zero intention of listening and learning. Having sat with Nominet’s CEO one-to-one shortly after he took office, it was eminently clear to me even then that reform was a lost cause.

bonusmedia · Jan 19, 2018

Shocking. Except it isn't really.

"This latest decision may be the spark that leads Nominet members to follow through on an earlier threat to lodge a formal complaint with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) accusing the registry of abusing its position as a dominant market force to introduce predatory pricing, and use price inflation to allow for cross-subsidization of products."

Anyone have more info on that?

Nigel · Jan 20, 2018

There are many other members on here that have better inside knowledge of Nominet and the real reason for this move. My feeling is that Nominet have overstretched themselves moving into other areas - particularly running the backend of around 30 ntlds and they were faced with either cutting charitable funding or increasing registration fees again. They must be massively subsidising the ntlds like .horse and .vodka (Nominet are reportedly charging out just $1 a domain) and it looks like they've been non starters that will leave nominet with a massive hangover. Even one of the better performers .blog is way below expected registration levels.

I never did agree with nominet charging its members higher registration fees so that it could choose good causes to spend our money. Their purpose should always have been running the .uk namespace, efficiently and economically for the benefit of all uk citizens. That would have meant less staff, less wages, less bonuses and lower reg fees...and a stronger .uk market.

Edwin · Jan 20, 2018

No. Nominet have been running a monster surplus for years before the price increase. And now they’ve got close to 50% more cash. The one thing they aren’t is financially overstretched.

They may be hurting on other grounds eg not enough resources for certain pet projects (no idea, and no way of knowing) but on the cash front they’re cackling gleefully all the way to the bank.

That doesn’t mean they won’t raise prices again. At this point, nothing would surprise me since greed appears to have become their prime mover.

Whois-Search · Jan 20, 2018

bonusmedia said:
Shocking. Except it isn't really.

"This latest decision may be the spark that leads Nominet members to follow through on an earlier threat to lodge a formal complaint with the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) accusing the registry of abusing its position as a dominant market force to introduce predatory pricing, and use price inflation to allow for cross-subsidization of products."

Anyone have more info on that?

I think he is referring to two years ago when Centralnic & Afilias members came to the AGM (as Registrars they had acquired) and asked questions about the MMX backend contract.

See 43 mins and 61 mins:

Nigel · Jan 20, 2018

Thanks for posting that Andrew. They were very good questions and included asking for assurances that Nominet would not be subsidising these ntld operations by using .co.uk money, and that they would not be engaged in anti competitive practices. They also tried to get some detailed answers on costings to which Nominet kept using 'confidentiality' as a means of refusing to disclose any financial information. The Nominet spokesperson does say in this meeting that that they would provide 'more thoughtful answers' on their website. Did that ever happen?

Whois-Search · Jan 20, 2018

Nigel said:
Thanks for posting that Andrew. They were very good questions and included asking for assurances that Nominet would not be subsidising these ntld operations by using .co.uk money, and that they would not be engaged in anti competitive practices. They also tried to get some detailed answers on costings to which Nominet kept using 'confidentiality' as a means of refusing to disclose any financial information. The Nominet spokesperson does say in this meeting that that they would provide 'more thoughtful answers' on their website. Did that ever happen?

They posted this long justification here on the forum: https://forum.nominet.uk/forum/member-forum/850-update-on-members-questions-from-agm

Ironically reading that now it includes the line:

Our revenues are re-invested in the business generally, according to our strategic priorities, with surplus funds donated to Nominet Trust to widen our public benefit contribution.

Nigel · Jan 20, 2018

I can't login to that forum - but thanks for that excerpt - Yes it is ironic. Edwin's right about greed and they probably still have a large pile of cash - but you can't help thinking that nominet's foolish foray into the ntlds has been an absolute disaster - funded by our money - and they're looking ahead to the possible fallout and financial implications.

Whois-Search · Jan 20, 2018

If MMX have 1.3 million domains mainly because of the Chinese investing in .vip
https://ntldstats.com/registry/group/Minds-Machines-Group-Limited

And .blog has got up to 145,000 names thanks to Wordpress.com pushing it
https://ntldstats.com/tld/blog

Then let’s say Nominet for the sake of argument gets £1 for each name for running the backend?

Then on top of that they have all the individual .brand contracts with larger companies at the bottom like .bbc
https://ntldstats.com/backend/Nominet

Each of those will be paying them £xxx,xxx a year for registry services.

That’s still several million in profit coming in ?

Nigel · Jan 20, 2018

I think that might be a little bit optimistic. I think it was reported that revenue might be as low as 75p per domain and current number of domains attributed to Nominet's backend operations (according to ntldstats) is about 1.5m. So lets say they're running the backend of 30 ntlds for a little over £1m a year. It's peanuts compared to the income from the .co.uk market.