Shorter .uk Internet domain proposed by Nominet | Hacker News Reader

Shorter .uk Internet domain proposed by Nominet

bbc.com

23 pointspmjordan34 comments

I don't think the benefits are worth the cost of the need to duplicate .co.uk/org.uk/me.uk/ac.uk domains in the .uk space plus the disputes over who should get it.

Suspect its a Nominet money grab having seen the recent TLD process.

yup. after Nominet realised how easy it is to raise dough after raising £3m on 1/2letter .co.uk auctions last October, and getting in the global trend of .names, they are now eagerly looking forward to earn much more millions from touting .uk to the swallowing public. And Nominet plans to sabotage everyone, who is happily trading under .co.uk at the moment, either by: a) selling .uk version to their competitors, if .co.uk owners do not have trademark or b) forcing them to 'sunrise' auctions, competing with every willing registered trademark or 'unregistered rights' holder and bidding against each other paying up thousands to Nominet. All that is just to secure .uk, so they can continue trading uninterrupted.

From Nominet's 'consultation paper' FAQ:

Q: Are you just forcing businesses to buy another name? A: This proposal is about offering greater choice with a new secure service that is tailored to meet the needs of anyone doing business online. The proposed features are likely to mean that the service may not be suitable for everyone. Businesses would not be forced to change from their existing .co.uk domain name but would have the option of buying a .uk with additional features if they believe it would benefit them.

Now, their planned 'additional features' are DNSSEC, hitting website every X days to do viruses/malware detections, giving domain owners a graphic 'badge' to place in the footer (lame lame lame), verifying registrant`s 'contact data' (require address to be in the UK posting there a 'PIN code' from time to time). And that's it!

This is pathetic to say the least, as those features are nothing of a real necessity or improvement. It is just a sham to do something to make it at least look like it is something of a value. But the real reason is of course too obvious.

Q: Why don't you just introduce these features to all .co.uk domains? A: It would be unfair to retrospectively impose a new suite of features and requirements on co.uk. .co.uk is already very successful and not all of the existing registrants would want or need the features we are proposing to include in the new service.

Of course it is more fair to let those owners to pay up, not because they need these nice features, but because they have no other choice if they still want to be on top of the .uk namespace (as .co.uk still is).

This reads like a nice revenue grab by Nominet.

You'll still need to own your .co.uk if you're a business, or else you'll have a squatter on it before you can blink, but now you'll be paying Nominet's fee of around £20 a year for a .uk, and £3.50 for your .co.uk

The article does say that any additional earnings derived would be passed onto an independent trust to invest in improving internet access and security. Nominet itself is not-for-profit. And there's at least some support for this URL-shortening change in this thread.

It doesn't seem like a revenue grab to me.

The fact that it is not for profit doesn't mean that it doesn't want to grow revenue. More money for salaries, more staff, more prestige for managing a big organisation. Plus their direct customers who they have relationships with are the registrars who have a profit motive in selling more domains.

It is quite possible for a not-for-profit to become a self expanding bureaucracy especially when it is gatekeeper/distributor over a resource. That said I'd take Nominet over getting Verisign to do it. The same risks apply in a commercial setting plus the push to profit.

Now I don't know the realities of Nominet or this particular proposal but I wanted to point out that in a case like this being not-for-profit is an insufficient defence against claims it is a revenue grab.

If they wanted it to be revenue neutral, they'd simply say "Any .co.uk now gets .uk free, except where there's a conflicting .org, .me or .ac", where there'd been to be some kind of conflict resolution process (possibly as simple as oldest registered version wins).

I'm happy with Nominet's administration in general, but as far as I can see this is just about increasing revenue while making a long overdue change.

And using .com as the domain for your actual website.

Seems to be a lot of money grabbing going on recently with .xxx and the new GTLDS.

If this is seriously a problem (which I honestly feel it isn't, considering we have gov.uk, nhs.uk, and sch.uk to name a few so .co.uk seems well places for companies within the uk) then why not just allow them to come in tandem? so when you purchase a .co.uk you automatically get the .uk variant as well included in the price.

Controlling a GTLD seems like a really good idea at the moment considering you can effectively just create a market for yourself based on other peoples desired to protect there brand. If you care about your brand your going to have to stump up another yearly registration fee when someones else decides to sell your brand name variant under there GTLD to the highest bidder

I wonder what the remainder of the UK would be called if Scotland secedes after the referendum for independence in 2014.

Perhaps the Former United Kingdom?

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland became the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland after Southern Ireland gained independence. After Scottish independence, I expect it would change to the United Kingdom of Southern Britain and Northern Ireland.

Surely if Scotland chose to leave Great Britain, it would still remain Great Britain?

Great Britain is the island. Scotland would find it very hard to leave it.

Well, there are two Great Britains - the Kingdom that was created by the Acts of Union in 1707 and lasted for about a century until Ireland joined, and the island:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingdom_of_Great_Britain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Britain

Well played :)

(assuming the acronym was intended...)

The United Kingdom of England, Wales and Northern Ireland

I just realised the the proposed TLD for Scotland is .sco - that doesn't sound very good!

Excellent! I remember Stephen Fry proposing this about 5 years ago in an impassioned plea about the tiresomeness of typing ".co" repeatedly. (I think he wanted rid of "www." at the start of URLs too)

At the time I thought "that'd be a good idea". And I still think it is!

"(I think he wanted rid of "www." at the start of URLs too)"

I am rather surprised the "web." movement never really took off to replace "www.".

Just glad folks no longer include the "http..." part when saying URLs now on radio and tv, and are less likely to say "www." too.

Is this the article you mean? http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/dec/01/timbernersl...

This is not a problem and it does not need fixing. Lots of countries have second-level domain names.

What are the benefits of this?

Lots of countries gave up bothering, like Germany where everything is top level now but used not to be. There is not even a standard for what the second level abbreviations are (eg .com.au vs .co.uk).

I detest all .co.*'s - I'm not sure why they implemented this in the first place?!

To give some context for an otherwise abstract label? Like .ac.uk is likely to be a school or university, .gov.uk is something government related. To me, .co.uk is the wild west of the UK domains, so be a bit more guarded.

Would .UK not serve the same purpose from your POV? It's the no-context UK domain, just like .com is the no context internet domain.

there is some potential for confusion though. I imagine scammers would love .edu.uk for fake university sites...

Names like .gov.uk currently have special status. If something ends .gov.uk then I know it has that special status that separates it from .co.uk. The implication is that it's vetted.

Allowing non-special commercial entities to claim their own .uk names will undermine this. government.co.uk is currently squatted but is obviously a commercial entity and not the Government. What will happen when government.uk gets squatted? What about all the other combinations?

Allowing direct .uk registrations will increase confusion and reduce security.

The 'additional security features' seems unworkable. The premise is that pure .UK have UK point of presence checks, etc, but consumers will not easily be educated that .UK is 'more secure' than .co.uk

It feels like Nominet have tried to find a bunch of premium features which they can sell as premium for new domains, but which don't actually cost that much to maintain.

There's no real need for it.

Yes please. I detest our use of .co.uk where .uk will suffice.

How innovative and forward thinking. They should most assuredly receive all the praise and accolades that accompany such unique creativity.

> Applicants would have to prove they had a UK presence and pay a higher fee.

HAHAHAHAHA yeah no thanks, I'll stick with my .com

Go home Nominet, you're drunk.

Downvoted for this :-0

This is clearly a way to extort money from UK businesses. You can't choose not to register the .co.uk, so now you'll have to register the .co.uk AND the .uk.

Then there's the mess and confusion of deciding who gets the .uk when there's a dispute.

And the fun and game when johnny user gets redirected to the dodgy knock-off version or a porn site placeholder instead of my-nice-widget-company because they got confused between the .co.uk and the .uk version of the name. Good job I didn't register my-nice-widget-co.co.uk too.

Clearly Nominet was drunk... resolve my downvotes!

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