.uk V2.0 Questions to Nominet & their Answers

[Nigel]

Thanks.

I just hope others can find the time to post on the Nominet Blog.

Hope to use blog with the media but it will not carry so much weight if it is one person doing the comments.

Agreed - great points you have made Stephen but I think nominet will use any excuse to not post these on their website - so probably best to keep your posts down to one a day from now and hopefully some others can also post some comments. There are quite a few in the queue awaiting moderation now - lets see if they add these to the blog on Monday. I'm sure they'd have been added immediately if they had been praising nominet.

 

[Stephen]

fair?

Another Nominet blog post:

"We have built into our proposals a mechanism for them to do this and we hope that it is as fair as possible"

The reason quoted for not adopting 'grandfathering rights' for .co.uk to .uk is the following statement from the background information:

"There are around 500,000 domains names, constituting 5% of the .uk registry that have identical third level strings – across more than one second level domain space. In some cases the registrants may be one and the same, however in most cases they will not be identical."

For 500,000 strings that is maximum 250,000 cases of which 30% would be same owners, so number down to 175,000, take out clear cyber squatting and the number is down to less than 100,000 cases, look at other factors and the problem domain cases would be a small fraction of under 1% of the total registry much less than the misleading headline figure Nominet uses.
Tiny number of problems compared to the millions of .co.uk owners who will loose out under the current Nominet .uk proposal.

Nominet have failed to supply the data to back up 500,000 and will not supply the breakdown of numbers of same ownership, 301 redirects, domains with no name servers, multiple tld strings, expiring domains etc. to make an informed decision on whether 'first registered' or '.co.uk / .uk pairing' would create less problems in the UK namespace to the 10,000,000+ existing registrants.

 

[Stephen]

no new posts by me for a while

Agreed - great points you have made Stephen but I think nominet will use any excuse to not post these on their website - so probably best to keep your posts down to one a day from now and hopefully some others can also post some comments. There are quite a few in the queue awaiting moderation now - lets see if they add these to the blog on Monday. I'm sure they'd have been added immediately if they had been praising nominet.

Will do, enjoy the weekend.

(last Nominet post was done before your post suggestion)

 

[Nigel]

Will do, enjoy the weekend.

(last Nominet post was done before your post suggestion)

Will do - same to you - might spend an hour or two in the garden before the forecast deluge appears.

 

[Stephen]

10,000,000 emails?

Todays New Nominet blog comment post:

In the feedback on V1 .uk Nominet proposal it was stated that Nominet did look at sending emails to all registrants, probably as many agree that the introduction of .uk would be the biggest change to the UK namespace since it began.

“Others however, specifically criticised Nominet for not directly emailing each of the registrants of domains in .co.uk and other second level .uk domains to draw their attention to the consultation. After taking legal advice, Nominet considered that it would be disproportionate to use the registrant contact data that had been provided to send unsolicited emails to registrants that were not specifically related to the provision of their existing registered domain(s). Given the specific protections and prohibitions contained in the Data Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations, many of the registrants who might have received such an email could have objected that this was an inappropriate use of their contact data and contrary to their data protection rights."​

Has Nominet received new legal advice about sending out an email to all registrants on its new .uk proposal? as I believe the terms of your new proposal would not be caught by the previous legal advice, so it would be possible to send out such an email to the owners of the 10,000,000 UK domains, as you tried to do previously.

The matter is equally important as it was last time, so every effort surely should be made to contact effected stakeholders.

Please can you provide clarification on this important area?

 

[Stephen]

New .uk Checking tool?

Monday's Nominet blog post

At the first Nominet round table meeting in London, I asked about whether Nominet would provide a new tool to check who was entitled to each .uk under your proposal. I was told it was being worked on and would be released shortly.

Hopefully it will also include the time registered to provide a resolution to when 2 or more domains were registered on the same day to 2 different owners.

I cannot find the new checking tool, some 3 weeks later.

Your website Questions and Answers on the subject state:

How do I know if I have a right of first refusal?

At the moment, you could check the status on the WHOIS database - by typing in your domain name string e.g.nominet.org.uk under each of the third levels offered by Nominet e.g. .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk etc. You would be able to check whether your registration is the only, or oldest one, within the .uk namespace by checking the ‘relevant dates’ section which tells you the date n which the domain was registered.
​

Can you please provide an update on when the new Nominet checking .uk tool will be available?

 

[getmein]

I think another reason they are not keen on contacting all registrants by email, is they appreciate it will be easier to push through the proposals with the support of the mega-registrars (who like Nominet have a vested interest in the proposals) rather than by seeking the approval of registrants.

Asking a registrant if they'd like to increase cost, increase confusion and possibly not have rights to a corresponding .uk is likely to illicit a negative response to the proposals given the sole benefit of a slightly shorter url. So while it's not a true, broad consultation without contacting registrants - I don't expect them to pursue a course of action which is likely to make their desired outcome more difficult to achieve.

 

[websaway]

I think another reason they are not keen on contacting all registrants by email, is they appreciate it will be easier to push through the proposals with the support of the mega-registrars (who like Nominet have a vested interest in the proposals) rather than by seeking the approval of registrants.

Asking a registrant if they'd like to increase cost, increase confusion and possibly not have rights to a corresponding .uk is likely to illicit a negative response to the proposals given the sole benefit of a slightly shorter url. So while it's not a true, broad consultation without contacting registrants - I don't expect them to pursue a course of action which is likely to make their desired outcome more difficult to achieve.

Very well articulated.

 

[Marcoose]

Still no other responses published. What a joke.

 

[Paullas]

Are you really suprised the way nominet are acting like this?

 

[Nigel]

Are you really suprised the way nominet are acting like this?

Doesn't surprise me - what surprised me was that Stephen got his original blog comment added within a few minutes of adding it last week. Must have slipped thro' the net! I've just sent an urgent reminder to [email protected]

 

[foz]

Doesn't surprise me - what surprised me was that Stephen got his original blog comment added within a few minutes of adding it last week. Must have slipped thro' the net! I've just sent an urgent reminder to [email protected]

Maybe they have more pressing demands? e.g. AGM results NEDs

 

[TinkyWinky]

Anyone know a good hack... one in the IT press...

Let them know there's an issue with the posting moderation quick smart!

 

[Stephen]

transparent?

Still no other responses published. What a joke.

I feel even more strongly about the ending of my only post they have allowed to be shown:

I feel that Nominet are not being transparent in this process.

I really hope Nominet show the rest of the posts very soon or it is showing that Nominet are afraid of rational and sensible questions and comments!

 

[Nigel]

I feel even more strongly about the ending of my only post they have allowed to be shown:

I really hope Nominet show the rest of the posts very soon or it is showing that Nominet are afraid of rational and sensible questions and comments!

It is most peculiar that none of our posts have been entered on the nominet website. I was told that the blog comment moderator worked in nominet's marketing dep't - yet if you look at the foot of nominet's blog page it refers you to a company called mollom.com - see http://mollom.com/web-service-privacy-policy

According to the link it is mollom that decides whether the postings are spam by a process of statistical computations and comparisons - which appear to be by a computer process - so I don't understand why anyone at nominet would even be involved in the process.

 

[getmein]

Perhaps there is an add-on in the enterprise version of the software for dealing with dissent and domainers.

 

[Retired_Member38]

Doesn't surprise me - what surprised me was that Stephen got his original blog comment added within a few minutes of adding it last week. Must have slipped thro' the net! I've just sent an urgent reminder to [email protected]

Or, one comment made it through the automated filters. Then when he kept repeatedly adding more nonsense (in the eyes of an algorithm) they decided enough was enough and spam queued them?

Its a non story.... you all have websites/blogs/facebook/twitter/access to Acorn so there is more than enough place to write whatever you want about this and have it published.

 

[Stephen]

post your post

I would hope and urge that more people add comment posts to the CEO blog on "A Time for Change"

http://www.nominet.org.uk/news/blog/time-change

and just in case they don't see the light of day, please post your post on this thread as well.

 

[Stephen]

Not appearing

Or, one comment made it through the automated filters. Then when he kept repeatedly adding more nonsense (in the eyes of an algorithm) they decided enough was enough and spam queued them?

Agree, it might have been the automated "Mollom privacy policy".

Thanks for the potential reason, but I did sent an email to a human being at Nominet on Friday to ask them to look into it.

From the thread it did also appear several other people also posted (single) comments on Friday from different ip addresses with no links in them and followed up with email to Nominet.

 

[Stephen]

perfect place

Its a non story.... you all have websites/blogs/facebook/twitter/access to Acorn so there is more than enough place to write whatever you want about this and have it published.

Disagree, Nominet website is a perfect place to show they are not being transparent about the questions they are being asked and not replying to.

Part of the problem is that I do not believe Nominet are being transparent and hide behind "its only a consultation" and refuse to provide answers to legitimate questions,
despite stating in the public forum of the London round table that they would be more transparent over .uk.

Even if Nominet reply "not relevant" to every question sent to them, then it will be for others to form an opinion as to the validity of their answers.