.uk V2.0 Questions to Nominet & their Answers

[GreyWing]

I think he qualifies it mate, he says 500,000 duplicate strings by Nominet's evidence. That means a maximum (as he states) of 250,000 (half of 500,000, at least 2 parties need to contest hence the half).

I've seen Stephen's and Edwin's work, these guys are very diligent. In fact he is on the low side as he says Nominet quote in excess of 500,000 strings.

 

[Marcoose]

Ah, so it really is a number pulled out of thin air then

imo I would remove that.... if you're going to just make shit up it completely ruins any credibility your document is going to have.

Monkey do me a favour. Can you stop trying to piss people off by writing your posts in the most tactless way you can think of? Pretty much everything that I've seen you post to date smacks of arrogance, rudeness and troll.

I don't expect you to do me this favour but thought I'd put it out there.

 

[Retired_Member38]

But it deliberately ignores multiple factors that make it painfully obvious the number of disputes are never going to be that high. Its a dishonest way of framing it, and from that point onwards it just means you can't trust whatever else is in the document, imho.

 

[GreyWing]

But it deliberately ignores multiple factors that make it painfully obvious the number of disputes are never going to be that high.

But that's the reason he states "potentially a maximum" and not his opinion.

 

[Stephen]

500,000 is misleading

But it deliberately ignores multiple factors that make it painfully obvious the number of disputes are never going to be that high. Its a dishonest way of framing it, and from that point onwards it just means you can't trust whatever else is in the document, imho.

I do take your point and in V1 .uk, I tore the number to shreds and showed the real number with issues would probably be under 100,000.

See my V1 .uk 21-12-2012 post #2105 http://www.acorndomains.co.uk/uk-domain-name-consultations/108491-uk-announced-211.html#post427712

However that is my educated guess, for a piece with facts, I have to use Nominet's exaggerated figures and it is not my fault they will not supply the breakdown, which would show the problem cases to be less than the only mathematical number you could quote from their figures as presented.

I assure you, I have tried very hard to get the breakdown from Nominet.

This quote appeared in the Guardian written by Nominet's Phil Kingsland responds to Adam Grunwerg's criticism of the company's proposed launch of the .uk domain on 17th December 2012.

http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/media-network-blog/2012/dec/17/value-secure-uk-namespace-nominet

It would not be practical to offer every existing .uk registrant the direct.uk equivalent as 470,000 domains in the .uk registry are not unique. For example, shop.co.uk and shop.org.uk are already registered to two different registrants.

I agree the number is misleading and Nominet use it as a large number to create a bigger problem than there is, this was pointed out in V1 but they continue to use it in V2.

In V2 in the .uk background document page 7

http://www.nominet.org.uk/sites/default/files/SecondLevelDomainRegistrationInUKBackgroundAndFurtherDetail_5.pdf

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.

My own tracking of numbers shows there has been an increase in .org.uk duplicate strings, which I believe is being done to give them rights to domain in the 6 months window, if the .co.uk owner does not take it. So the number is expanding.

p.s. at least I halved my number to 250,000 rather than use the 500,000 number Nominet use, so I should get some points for honesty? or maybe somebody should let Nominet know they are using misleading numbers to support their case?

 

[Stephen]

thanks - added extra

Thanks for emails and posts on the basis of a document (page 25 post #251)to show why other UK stakeholders might want to get interested in .uk.

In the detail will cover Nominet's lack of transparency, lack of co-operation, lack of answers, lack of effort to bring this to the wider audience, lack of a business case for .uk, lack of effort to engage in a debate about .uk, lack of published research and Nominet's efforts to suppress questions that have been raised that require answers.

Also added:

There are also the special cases of a few hundred .co.uk registrants that are also not going to get the equivalent .uk domain because of Nominet's decisions.

These include, the unilaterally reservation of .uk domain names for government quango's (without even checking with them they want the reserved .uk domain names ) and registrants who spent over £3,000,000 with Nominet at a recent auction for premium .co.uk domains, where the equivalent .uk will be given to .me.uk owners under the current proposal.

Not to mention the people who recently took up the chance to extend and pay for renewals on .co.uk for 10 years as .co.uk was the place to be in the UK namespace only to be told the place to be will be replaced by .uk.

 

[Edwin]

Who is the document aimed at?

If it's at regular businesses, then they almost certainly don't care about the "backstage drama" i.e. anything to do with how Nominet has conducted the process. They're run by busy folks, so the only think that matters to them is how (if) the coming of .uk risks impacting their business. And that's it. Everything else is irrelevant. Sure, the drama influences the process, but the result of the process is the only important thing here.

So if that's your target audience, you have to simplify, then simplify again. Throw away everything that doesn't relate to the core issue of impact on real businesses. What you have left should ideally be self-contained, self-explanatory, and fit on a single side of A4 at a reasonably large font size.

If your audience is journalists fishing for stories, then you have to craft it in a different way.

And so on. You can't realistically hope to have an impact with a Swiss Army knife approach to the document.

In fact, I'd go further and suggest almost nobody cares about Nominet's process outside our microscopic industry except if it can be proven to be so outrageously bad that it becomes news-worthy. At that point, there's something for the media to sink their collective teeth in. But as things stand, the only people getting hot and bothered about the situation are those inside the domain industry or extremely closely connected to it.

So if you can put together a solid, provable, evidence-based case then that's something to consider. If not, it may be better to focus your effort on the simple document for real businesses I mentioned above (and keep the details out of it)

 

[Stephen]

Shorter version

Who is the document aimed at?

If it's at regular businesses, then they almost certainly don't care about the "backstage drama" i.e. anything to do with how Nominet has conducted the process. ...So if you can put together a solid, provable, evidence-based case then that's something to consider. If not, it may be better to focus your effort on the simple document for real businesses I mentioned above (and keep the details out of it)

Thanks as always. It is aimed to get read my Journalists, Businesses and MP's, so agree it has to be on one page, relevant and snappy. I intend to have more but detail but make clear it is optional reading.

One document (less than A4) - one message = get involved with .uk.

In my first 9 drafts, I mostly went though things that we wrong with Nominet like bonuses at Nominet, lack of transparency being reasons to look at .uk, that is why I developed v10 to deal with what effects .uk will the UK namespace.

Taking on your comments to make it shorter, does anybody think this is closer to the main points might get more interest in the subject:

.uk what you should know before you complete the consultation

Nominet the UK domain registrar authority are trying to introduce a new domain name extension: .uk (example ibm.uk) in 2014, although the details of the proposal and consultation have not been widely publicised.

I would urge you to read this document and then please complete the consultation feedback now.

If .uk is introduced in the way Nominet propose, there are unforeseen and damaging consequences that are likely to happen:

1. Millions of .co.uk owners with built up business will find that as they did not know or understand .uk, their domain name with a .uk extension will be owned by somebody else.
2. Up to 250,000 businesses may find they don’t have the right to their equivalent .uk domain, due to the way Nominet intend to allocate rights to the domain, namely .org.uk, .net.uk and .me.uk owners.
3. 10,000’s of businesses per year, after .uk is introduced, who obtained the .uk for protection, will forget to renew the .co.uk or .uk domain as it is not used and it will then fall into the hands of somebody else.
4. Organizations that move over to .uk will incur huge rebranding costs which will cost the economy billions of £’s for little or no benefit.
5. Confusion will reign over what the different UK domain extensions mean compared to the order we have at present with .co.uk (commercial), .org.uk (not for profit), .me.uk (personal), .gov.uk (UK government) what will .uk actually mean?
6. Moving domain names even from .co.uk to .uk can be very disruptive to search engine rankings, which many businesses will not understand and find out to their cost, the damage that can be done to traffic, search engine rankings and lost links.
7. Confidence in UK domains may be lost by the consumer in the way Nominet has handled the introduction, which may affect existing registrants in all sorts of ways.
8. Confidence over time may be lost in businesses that maintain .co.uk and don’t move over to .uk and so suffer commercially in the long term if they did not obtain the equivalent .uk.
9. It is harder to find a new domain .uk if everybody wants the .uk whereas before certain organizations used different extensions such as .org.uk.
10. There will also be a wave of cyber crime based on the domain name, which has already started to happen in registrations have been made for capturing type in and email mistakes.

If any of the above alarms you, please get involved and complete the Nominet consultation.

The details of the current .uk proposal can be found here, but please be careful you have to read all the links.

If you have any specific questions or comments then I can be contacted on [email protected].

The rest of the document will provide you with more details with background into .uk, some more insight into the current .uk proposal and an alternative proposal to introduce .uk in a different way that you may consider is worth suggesting to Nominet (100% .co.uk and .uk pairing).

 

[Stephen]

independant review of .uk?

After the Nominet election results and releasing that the top 20 registrars control the board of Nominet and represented on it, the quote the New Zealand Law Society made in their feedback come into my mind:

The DNCL stands to increase its revenue significantly from extra registrations under the proposed scheme. The Law Society is therefore concerned that the DNCL has a conflict of interest in undertaking this consultation and implementing the proposed registration scheme.

I have tried to keep away from the money angle, although Edwin did write a good V2 article on the subject recently or the Nominet bonus pool as being a reason for .uk.

But when I take the above and put it all together with the lack of a business case for .uk, the lack of effort by Nominet to advice people about the proposal and the lack of transparency even trying to supress free speech on the subject.

It is clear that .uk needs an independent review before it would go through rather the Nominet board of 10 to ensure it is in the best interest of the UK namespace.

I hope that some people may consider adding this thought into their feedback?

 

[Stephen]

V1 .uk feedback public?

I'm considering adding my V1 feedback into the V2 .uk consultation and stating that it can be made public.

This would provide a public record of the suggestions / observations they ignored from V1 that they did not foresee or act upon in V2.

 

[Stephen]

.wales what is happening?

The .wales / .cmyru consultation was held at the start of the year and close on Thursday 28th February 2013 and yet I cannot find mention of the conclusion of the consultation?

The separate website Nominet set up for .wales

http://www.domainforwales.org.uk/

has not had any news updates for a while.

I'm interested to see if Nominet will go the 100% pairing route of .wales / .cymru as it was one of the options they proposed.

I wish they would have included in the current .uk proposal an option of linking .co.uk and .uk.

Also it will be interesting to see what level of support it has and if they have fixed a price for the domains at a level they will be profitable.

 

[Stephen]

do you want to invest when they change the rules?

As Nominet in their blog and Q & A are obsessed with growing the UK registry, I wonder if the effect of not supporting the large portfolio owners and short auction winners in .uk (version 1 and v2), will put them off from investing in UK domains in the future and anybody looking at getting involved. So effectively acting against their intended aim.

As the landscape with so many more gtld's coming should scare any new comer's from investing in domains anyway.

I would guess that up to 25% of the UK registry is owned by domain investors of one shape / size or another?

I can see my portfolio of UK domains reducing by 20% - 40% over the next few years, some of that being my fault in poor names but Nominet actions on .uk and drop catching are a wake up call to streamline as there as so many more uncertainties in investing in the UK namespace.

 

[Marcoose]

It is clear that .uk needs an independent review before it would go through rather the Nominet board of 10 to ensure it is in the best interest of the UK namespace.

Exactly what I said in my feedback on the time for a change page. Unfortunately they decided not to publish it though.

 

[Stephen]

V1 .uk Board vote

For those that say V2 .uk only a consultation, in the interests of transparency and to see how close we came to having a .uk in the form of the V1 proposal.

I would like Nominet to provide details of the Board vote on the subject, of exactly who voted for V1 .uk as it was. (this would have been useful at the directors vote).

 

[Stephen]

Different cos?ts

For .uk if the address verification went ahead, what if there were 2 separate renewal /registration costs with say £20 p.a. for non-UK holders, as the cost of their address verification is so much higher?

Has anybody come across and domain tld's that have 2 tier costs based on registrant origin address?

 

[Stephen]

Nominet blog - comment postings?

has anybody had a reply from Nominet explaining why it accepted blog comments a few weeks ago on "a time for change" but never published them?

 

[Nigel]

has anybody had a reply from Nominet explaining why it accepted blog comments a few weeks ago on "a time for change" but never published them?

not a dickie bird

now sent 4 emails - 2 to the [email protected] address and 2 to Phil Kingsland. Asked a few questions and for my comment - that was added before they removed the comments facility - to be added.

Wonder what is going on in the marketing department? I feel like printing off my emails and sending a recorded delivery letter.

 

[TinkyWinky]

Wonder what is going on in the marketing department? I feel like printing off my emails and sending a recorded delivery letter.

Ha ha - I would and send a copy to the Guardian, Telegraph and Times too!!

 

[Stephen]

no email responses to .uk?

just finishing my report into .uk and filling in some gaps and links

just noticed that there is no email address for consultation feedback on nominet website, you have to fill online form or same form offline and download.

as last time over 17% where email response in v1 .uk,
it seems odd to cut off this type of feedback?

 

[Stephen]

Report on .uk - DRAFT

Still filling in content, links and facts into my report on .uk.

Once document finished, it will need polishing (as many have pointed out my grammer is not good), checked by a lawyer to ensure I don't get a legal action from Nominet and then published here for any final comments and suggestions.

I intend to put a single advert in a major paper and have sourced and employed a PR company to get media coverage.

Anyway here is the draft finish to the report:

Conclusion on .uk​

In 2012 Nominet’s .uk proposal was ill thought out, naïve and plainly wrong in viewing .uk as a new namespace despite an 20 year established UK domain naming system, that has worked well.
Trying to wrap Security for the new improved .uk would have made all existing .co.uk and .org.uk second rate sites overnight.
The auction model to generate £50,000,000+for Nominet was obviously not well received either.
All so wrong in fact, nothing apart from a UK address for overseas registrants appears in the current .uk proposal.

The current .uk proposal tries to rewrite history by providing the oldest registrant the domain if they claim it, which nobody requested according to the feedback from the previous .uk proposal.
To claim it you have to know about it (opt in) and understand the consequences, which the majority of .co.uk owners do not understand the situation and it is doubtful whether they would all receive the communication about .uk and not believe it is a spam scam.
It will be expensive to administer and resolve the many inevitable disputes for years to come.
But the main problems with the current proposal is it is cyber criminal and cyber squatters dream come true
and could possibly confuse consumers, undermining the whole of the UK namespace.

Don’t get sucked into thinking “grandfathering rights of .co.uk to .uk” is the solution as this again has the issues of only if it is claimed and as there will be different ownership of .co.uk and .uk the problems will still be present only on a smaller scale.

The only viable cost effective, practical and fair solution is to 100% link ownership of .uk and .co.uk for no cost to the owner:

• The ownership can never to split into 2 separate domains
• Automatically resolve to .uk and .co.uk version at registry level
• .uk can be used by those that want to as can those that want to stay with .co.uk
• Can move to .uk from .co.uk when and if it suits
• No opt in option so no expensive communication to 10,000,000 UK domains and the 60 million UK consumers to explain a complex system
• .org.uk and other 3rd level domains remain in place with no confusion on purpose
• No sub domain selling of .uk (due to security reasons Nominet currently state)
• Lowest cost to implement, minimal costs to Nominet and so no extra cost required to .uk holder.
• Quick to implement - simple code change at Nominet
• Long term solution, change from example.co.uk uk to example.uk will be as easy as www.example.co.uk became example.co.uk but both work
• Easy to explain .uk and other 3rd level tld's at agreatplacetobe.co.uk
• Majority of serious .org.uk sites own equivalent .co.uk and so will have .uk automatically, if they require it
• Avoids costly abusive DRS registration" claims by .co.uk owners at £500 a time.
• Compensation costs to a few with-held domains that may be required for future 3rd level extra domain capacity
• No losers (.org.uk owners still have domain as is and it will work as it does now)
  

The only alternative not explored is “no .uk” at all, which always an option.

The choice is yours but please get involved and let Nominet know your views, whatever they maybe via the Nominet Consultation.