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Comment by clort | Hacker News Reader

So naturally, there are some complaints

> The Commission's announcement was met with severe criticism with .eu website owners claiming that revoking existing domains went against the right to property.

which if this

> EU regulations currently stipulate that .eu websites can only be allocated to EU citizens – regardless of their place of residence – as well as non-EU citizens and organizations established in a member state.

is "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" then it seems to me that this revocation is somewhat premature. It could be argued, that these domains were allocated in accordance with the law and just because the status of the owner has changed, that does not require Eurid to deallocate them, which would expose them to legal repercussions if they simply chose to do that.

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fwiw the relevant regulation seems to be : https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=uriserv%...

The way I read article 4 3 b) I think the registry is allowed to terminate a domain name when the domain holder stops being eligible.

also, those owners could still be second passport holders and therefore EU citizens (regardless of their residence). So it's somewhat premature to simply assume that because they currently reside in the UK they're not eligible anymore, or am I missing something here?

No you are not missing anything. I am an EU citizen residing in the UK, but I was and still am Austrian by nationality and only hold an Austrian citizenship. Luckily I never fancied a .eu domain, but if the EU would have prematurely revoked my domain then I'd be very unhappy. I find the EU mostly very incompetent. Great ideas, but terrible execution on literally every matter.

EDIT:

I'm being downvoted because I have an honest opinion which isn't nationalistic. That's quite funny. I don't see myself as any particular nationality. I don't see myself as having a strong allegiance towards the EU, Austria, the UK or Poland (my cultural heritage). If the EU sucks at something (and unfortunately they do that a lot) then I'm not afraid to point it out. Patting people on the back and pretending that they are awesome when they actually suck isn't going to help anyone. Sometimes it's best to be brutally honest, especially if it's people who are unelected and the only way to show discontent is through voice and not ballot.

> No you are not missing anything

A bold statement. And then you proceed to speculate with:

> "Luckily I never fancied a .eu domain, but if the EU would have prematurely revoked my domain then I'd be very unhappy."

So you don't know if they are missing anything or not. You didn't prove it, but you sure have an opinion about it and the EU, which doesn't add to discussion. Which is why you're being downvoted.

They cancelled .eu domains for all registrants who reside in the UK, irrespective of their citizenship. That is not a speculation. They ask for those people to prove their citizenship before the end of March. Why doesn't the EU first ask for the citizenship proof before harming its own citizen? It's kind of dumb to think that the EU happily harms its own citizen and don't even realise it because they think the only harm UK folks.

> Why doesn't the EU first ask for the citizenship proof before harming its own citizen?

Did you check that they didn't? Do you know that? Because they did ask: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25648952

You drop accusations left and right despite being few clicks away from actually checking these notifications: https://eurid.eu/en/home/

From the first notice posted on Oct 1st 2020: https://eurid.eu/en/news/first-brexit-notice/

"Registration data may be updated by indicating a legally established entity in one of the eligible Union Member States, or by updating their residence to a Union Member State, or proving their citizenship of a Union Member State irrespective of their residence."

So, again, you just come off salty, ignorant and prejudiced towards EU without merit, and there isn't room on Hackernews for such attitude. So yeah, you do deserve to get downvoted into oblivion.

And, as expected, dustinmoris never bothered to apologize for outright lying. I swear people like him/her are making HN becoming another Reddit.

However right you may be on this, just a bit of feedback; accusing someone of being ignorant, prejudiced and lying could also come off as “salty”.

Misinformed maybe, but they admitted they were wrong.

Also:

> Please don't post comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Yes I went to the eurid website and they had a facility to declare citizenship beforehand so you’re right, I simply assumed massive EU incompetence based on precedence, but in this case it wasn’t their fault.

>They cancelled .eu domains for all registrants who reside in the UK, irrespective of their citizenship.

No, they didn't. Eurid have sent out several notifications telling registrants what to do if they are still eligible to have a .eu domain by virtue of the fact they are EU citizens.

Source: I have (well, had...) a .eu domain and read those emails.

I didn't downvote you, but if you want to avoid downvotes, you should probably substantiate your opinion.

> Great ideas, but terrible execution on literally every matter.

Off the top of my head, I can think of 3 things worked on by the EU that I think are well implemented:

- Erasmus programme

- Roaming regulations

- EU-China investment treaty

I also really like the GDPR, but I understand that its enforcement hasn't been though enough...

Why do you think that the EU's execution is terrible on literally everything?

Like GDPR? Try reading it.

The rules of .eu domain ownership were known in advance, and there was many years of advance notice and one year of transition rules. If domain owners didn't take action on that long transition period I'd say the incompetence lies with them.

As per the article:

> and owners now have three months to prove their right to run a .eu domain. This means updating contact data to transfer the .eu domain to an EU-subsidiary outside the UK; or declaring citizenship or residence of an EU member state.

So they still have a grace period in addition to the previous transition year, in addition to the time after triggering Art. 50

This is pure speculation. Let me counter with the equivivalent counter argument: More likely that domain holders were given time (about 12 months) to validate their eligibility.

I very much doubt that Eurid "simply assumed" that because a registrant resides in the UK, they are not an EU citizen.

These registrants probably had to validate whether or not they are EU citizens, and didn't respond to the question, or responded negatively.

Yep, I had one .eu domain. Got a few e-mails, happily ignored them all and let them cancel it.

That’s not typically how it works. Normally, if you fail to prove eligibility, there’s a grace period during which your registrar waits for proof that’s considered acceptable by the registry. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but that’s what usually happens. You may not be able to use the domain during all or part of that grace period, but you don’t actually lose ownership of the domain until that grace period lapses.

Does "be allocated" mean "the act of allocating" or "being presently allocated"?

To me, it has to be "being presently allocated". Otherwise, any reseller based in the EU could act as middleman and make .eu available for any entity in the world by transferring the rights after registration, which goes obviously against the intent of the rule.

There are brokers of .eu domains that allow you to get a .eu address for the purpose. Of course it's a service and subscription, but it's trivial for anyone to get a .eu domain.

I think that might be a misread of "allocated" - for instance, I'm currently allocated to my employer. That doesn't mean I can't be terminated.

Yes, this seems to be the most spiteful possible interpretation (especially before the new rules).

It seems easier and more sensible just to enforce the rules at renewal.

That's unfair to people whose domains were up for renewal in January and February compared to November and December, though.

Imagine also if you had a domain run by multiple people. Only for the one its registered under to be a UK citizen. You get de-platformed and were given little to no warning to switch the registrant.

Warnings were sent in October, with reminders in December. Afaik, domain owners who’ve had their domains suspended can validate their eligibility again. So I think it is possible to transfer ownership of the domain to someone (or an entity) that is eligible.

Emails (from GoDaddy) seem to have been sent to registrars as early as August 2018 [0]

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25649326

Warnings were sent in 2019 and early 2020 as well, just in case there was no withdrawal agreement concluded.

This all said, I feel this is a massive non-issue. The EU announced their plan to do this very early on, and while I thought it was a bad idea for similar "property" reasons as you've mentioned, webmasters have had what? 3.5 years to change their URLs? We saw this with GDPR, and the bottom line just seems like its always going to be the Six Ps: Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.

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