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Nominet,
the administrator of Great Britain's
popular .uk ccTLD, set off a firestorm
last year when they announced they wanted
to allow people to register names in the
top level .uk extension (historically, .uk
registrations have been available only in second
level extensions, most notably the
universally recognized .co.uk. Operators
of current .co.uk websites were shocked
because Nominet's original proposal did
not give then any "grandfathered"
rights to their name in .uk, leaving
the door open for a new registrant to
benefit from brands equity built entirely
by someone else. Adding
insult to injury, even if the
current |
UK
flag image from Bigstock
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.co.uk
owner could get their name in .uk, the
proposed cost for the new domains was eight
times higher than .co.uk. |
As
anyone would expect, .co.uk owners immediately
took up arms (with one of England's most
senior industry veterans, Edwin Hayward,
among those at the forefront of the protest).
Nominet backed off and began revising their
strategy. After moving to a second set of
proposed rules, then a third, Nominet finally announced
on Wednesday (Nov. 20, 2013) that .uk domains
are coming next year but with a substantially
different set of rules than were first
proposed. Current .co.uk owners will retain
rights to their names in .uk for five years
and the price for a .uk will be the same
as it has been for .co.uk.
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Edwin
Hayward |
To
see if the changes are enough to mollify
Nominet's critics, I called on Mr. Hayward
to find out what he thought about
Nominet's new
plan for .uk. "There's
so much "support" material
alongside the summaries that Nominet has
put out that I've barely scratched the
surface, including the full text of many
responses to the last consultation, as
well as third party case studies and
summaries," Hayward noted. "That
said, I feel that - if you pre-suppose a
need for .uk to go ahead at all - then
the final revision Nominet has decided on
is significantly better than the V2
consultation, which in turn was
significantly better than the proposal in
the V1 consultation round."
Hayward
continued, "Given that the
"right of refusal" is now set at
5 years, this will give companies and
domain investors plenty of time to
evaluate the take-up of .uk and choose
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exercise
their option to acquire the matching .uk
at a timing of their convenience. It
will also potentially save eligible
businesses a significant amount of money
that might otherwise need to be spent on
"warehousing" names until it's
clear whether they want to use them or
not." |
"The
difference between the V2 period (6 months) and
the final five year period represents up to 4.5
years worth of reg fees, i.e. a total of
approximately £19/domain ($30/domain) saved on
a wholesale basis vs. V2, and significantly more
on a retail basis. (That figure is a maximum,
and assumes that the option to register the
domain is taken up on the very last day of the 5
year period)."
Hayward
added, "While the following is speculation
on my part, it's also long enough for Nominet to
see if the security concerns (phishing,
misdirected emails etc.) materialize to any
great extent and if so, I presume they might
still have the option of extending that 5
year period to keep the domain names in question
out of general availability and so preclude any
such security issues from occurring. I have no
indication that they would choose to do so, but
the timing is sufficiently long so as to afford
Nominet the flexibility of a real
evaluation of the new extension "in situ"
in the real world."
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"The
pricing disparity has also been addressed,
with the new .uk domains at parity
with .co.uk and other UK namespace
extensions. This maintains the significant
discount to .com pricing that UK namespace
domain owners have always enjoyed, and is most
welcome," Hayward said.
"Nominet
have crafted the cutoff period rules very
carefully, so as not to advantage anyone
with knowledge of the final decision. Only
domains registered prior to 28 October
2013 have any eligibility for the
corresponding .uk, except under certain
very carefully defined |
Union
Jack keyboard image from Bigstock |
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circumstances
- and .co.uk holders have been given
priority, a decision which reflects the huge
sums of money that UK businesses have
spent collectively over the years
effectively "branding" .co.uk on
behalf of Nominet," Hayward noted. |
"Perhaps
conscious of the levels of criticism leveled
against them during the lengthy consultation
process, Nominet have clearly put a huge
amount of effort into communicating not just
the final decision, but the logic and rationale
behind it, and the supporting evidence used in
reaching that decision. I commend this effort."
(Editor's note:
This paper
(.pdf file) sets out Nominet's logic for
proceeding with a .uk rollout and this FAQ
page on Nominet's site will answer
the most frequently asked questions about
it).
In closing, Hayward said, "Overall, I
believe that the status quo would still
have served UK business interests better
but, given that a decision had been taken to
proceed with launching .uk, the final proposal
is pretty close to the best case scenario
for such a launch. As such, I'd give it a cautious
thumbs up. It's certainly very nice to see
the cloud of uncertainty that was hanging
over the UK namespace dissipate, that's
for sure!"
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