Introduction of .uk – Don’t Do It!
Legendary domainer Edwin Hayward has put together a 26 page position paper about Nominet’s rollout of .UK, entitled “Introduction of .uk – Don’t Do It!”.
Nominet are a public purpose internet company, that has been running the .uk, country code Top Level Domain name registry since 1996 and will be running the .wales and .cymru domains from 2013. This includes protecting, promoting and supporting the online presence of more than 10 million domain names.
Nominet plan to launch the .UK domain name extension and I cant understand why? There is no need for this additional extension – The UK currently uses the .co.uk and .org.uk which both have been in existance for a long period of time and adding another extension is going to cause major havoc – Nominet have already stated that if you own a .co.uk etc you don’t have any rights to own the .uk – It doesn’t plan to offer a grandfather style system like when the .co was launched. This wont just have an effect on Domain Name Investor but the little guy who operates online or the local plumber who might own GlasgowPlumbers.co.uk now has to compete with GlasgowPlumbers.uk….
I would encourage all domainers and business owners who currently own any .co.uk or .org.uk domain names visits MyDomainNames.co.uk and reads the report that Edwin Hayward has put together.
These are the reasons why Edwin feels so strongly about this issue.
- The internet is big business and hugely important to the UK economy (8.3% of GDP)
- It’s all based on domain names such as example.co.uk
- Most businesses use .co.uk, and 93% of UK names are .co.uk
- Nominet now proposes the release of .uk domain names (e.g. example.uk) for the first time. You can see the details of Nominet’s proposal on their website (link opens in a new window).
- However, these names will not be offered to the owners of .co.uk (e.g. the BBC would not automatically get BBC.uk)
- Instead priority will be given to trademark holders. Sounds fair to you? Read here why this is a bad idea.
- Existing domain owners will have to prove that they are entitled to the matching .uk domain name, or buy it at auction (if it hasn’t already been taken by a trademark holder)
- This will cause uncertainty and confusion, and risks damaging trust in .co.uk and hurting UK businesses
- The direct cost to UK businesses will be at least £50,000,000 per year, and associated adjustment costs could run to £billions
- Other countries went about the same process quite differently. In every previous case, existing domain owners were given priority ahead of other interests.
Time is running out… To find out all about this issue, and how your business is likely to be affected, please download the 26-page position paper. It contains detailed statistics, an overview of international best practice, and a fairer proposal for the release of .uk.
I think, it is a good idea. .UK is shorter than .CO.UK. It also opens a lot of opportunities for those who missed the registration of .co.uk.
I am going to register a couple of these domain names.uk
I think it’s criminal the way Nominet are behaving. Forget domainers, the simple fact that they open this as a (very short!) consultation and haven’t consulted the main people that matter (ie every single person who has registered a co.uk, org.uk or me.uk domain name) leaves their status as ‘guardians of the public good’ well and truly open to question. They hardly have the excuse of not having everyone’s email address! I really hope this makes the mainstream press in the not too distance future and it’s exposed for the money making sham that it is – Don’t get me wrong I’m not knocking the fact the .uk is aesthetically better than .co.uk but we’re too far down the line with co.uk now to be as flippant as they’re being with any change to the status quo particularly when it will cost so many businesses so much money and many will lose out on “their” name.