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UK Parliament Domain Without Registrar

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the heller-uses-easydns dept.

asobala writes "According to this story at The Register, the UK parliament is using the domain www.parliament.uk. It's a top-level domain because it was registered before August 1996, before Nominet handled .uk domains. But since there is no registrar, they can't prove that they own it."

31 of 266 comments (clear)

  1. .uk by oateater · · Score: 3, Funny

    I should hurry up and sue, and get my website back!!!

  2. Innocent till proven guilty by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative


    Innocent till proven guilty

    they cant prove they own it because they dont have to, its up to others to prove they don't own it or are not entitled to it

    simple

    1. Re:Innocent till proven guilty by egreB · · Score: 4, Informative

      It was this about reading the articles... (-8

      They were trying to register an SSL certificate with Thawte, and Thawte needed them to prove it was their own domain. Nobody could actually prove that..

      So, in this case, it's up to them to prove that they are entitled to it, though nobody forces them to. They can just not sign up with Thawte..

  3. Of course... by mikeophile · · Score: 5, Funny

    It is well known that parliament.uk is rightfully the property of George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic.

    1. Re:Of course... by Ilan+Volow · · Score: 3, Funny
      Makes you wonder what a threatening letter from lawyers would look like


      From: Thompson, Worth, Haberdasher attorneys at law
      To: George Clinton

      Ow, we want the domain
      Give up the domain
      Ow, we need the domain
      Gotta have that domain

      --
      Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
  4. frickin cybersquaters by CySurflex · · Score: 3, Funny

    Are you kidding me?!

    Everyone knows they are just a bunch of cybersquaters who registered parliament.uk so all the people who don't know how to spell it the right way (Parlament) will get to their site.

    oh wait... that is the right spelling? never mind.

  5. I own slashdot.org by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

    Yeah, I own slashdot.org, I registered it back in 1954 before Al Gore invented the internet. I DEMAND you hand the domain over to me!!

  6. �90 by jkcity · · Score: 2, Informative

    I tried getting out of paying my £90 to nominet UK too, seriously thats how much they charge ro renew domains without a registra, ripp off.

  7. Thanks to slashdot... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    soon they won't even be able to prove it exists.

  8. Several options to solve this problem... by Akardam · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Well, short of going in and holding a gun to Thwate's head, they have several options, as I see it:

    1. Setup www.parliment.govt.uk, and have the webserver that handles www.parliment.uk redirect /(.*) to www.parliment.govt.uk/$1.

    2. Sign their own cert.

    3. Farm out the credit card transactions themselves to another site.

    I guess if they got smart about it they could go through some sort of legal process that confirms that they have "ownership" of the netblock that the DNS servers for parliment.uk are on, and therefore they are the defacto owners (posession is 9/10ths of the law?) of parliment.uk.

    Nonetheless, an interesting situation.

    1. Re:Several options to solve this problem... by mocktor · · Score: 3, Interesting

      its a shame that certificates can't be reliably delegated in the same way as DNS - securing the internet would be a much less painful process if the owner of the domain could announce their chosen cert authority as part of their domain's DNS record, then bodies like thawte could be left out of the loop altogether.

      [just my daft ruminations though, feel free to explain why this wouldn't work]

    2. Re:Several options to solve this problem... by jaoswald · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Parliament does not have to go through any externally imposed process to get anyone else to *legally* recognize them; under the British constitution, Parliament can legislate whatever it wants---it is completely and utterly sovereign.

      The only problem is to get Thawte (or, rather, their British representative) to *technically* recognize them, so they can instruct their machines to approve the certificates. The obstacle is not a legal one, but rather a policy of Thawte itself. Thawte's policy is presumably strict so that its other clients can trust that spoofing won't be likely to happen.

    3. Re:Several options to solve this problem... by mgrant · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Your argument is an interesting one, but the problem is that DNS itself is insecure. That's the whole reason projects like DNSSEC exist. If we ever reach the point when we can guarantee that DNS queries are secure, then your proposal would be completely valid. Let's hope we get there someday :)

  9. Hah by fateswarm · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Interesting story. It's sounds so strange having all these second level org.uk, ac.uk, police.uk etc. and non an official .uk operator.

    It's the same thing that makes me wonder why is that the case.

    How can all these second level domain operators exist but not an operator of the 1st level?

    Why don't they give it to the sum of the second level operators to decide?

    If the matter is really on the air, that's the most sane solution I can think of

    1. Re:Hah by Tailhook · · Score: 4, Informative

      You misunderstand.

      Nominet controls the uk. TLD and most of the xxx.uk. SLDs.

      Nominet doesn't control parliament.uk. The authoritive name servers for uk. (Nominet's servers) return NS delegation records for parliament.uk., and those servers do not appear to be Nominet servers. Therefore, Parliament controls it's own SLD.

      Why this is difficult to deal with I don't know. Nominet should only have to confirm to Thawte that Parliament owns the SLD. Nominet controls uk. and, in turn, the UK government controls parliament.uk., what's the problem here?

      --
      Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
  10. no, somebody else owns it. duh. by jdkane · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Doesn't anybody stop to think that the UK parliament might *implicitly* own the domain www.parliament.uk because they've been using it since before 1996? If they haven't registered it then nobody else has either, so nobody else is more apt to acquire it. And I'm sure somebody else wants it. I don't have a receipt for that pair of boots I bought in 1998. Maybe somebody else owns them even though I've been wearing them for the past 5 years. Come to think about it, I'm going out to buy a new pair of boots. Come on, give us some good articles to talk about.

    1. Re:no, somebody else owns it. duh. by zCyl · · Score: 4, Funny

      Even more obvious, maybe the UK parliament owns the domain because they ARE the UK parliament?

      True. That's the same reason that the US Whitehouse owns www.whitehouse.com

  11. Let's not be hasty... by The+Bungi · · Score: 4, Funny
    ...and Slashdot the British parliament, mmmkay?

    We don't want the Royal Marines raiding the VA Software headquarters looking for alleged terrorists Abdul Hemos and the commander of the cell, Hashish Taco.

  12. .co.uk by Newtonian_p · · Score: 5, Interesting
    I always wondered why I always see .co.uk and (almost) never just .uk.

    I know that co stands for commercial but why doesn't Nominet allow plain .uk to be registered anymore?

    --

    There are 2 kinds of people in this world: Those who write in decimal and those who don't

    1. Re:.co.uk by netsharc · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Interesting point, which makes me remember, that .de domain names are usually just that, plain .de . For example earlier today we had this, ther's also this site. The same thing goes for .ch - for example the URL this famous site - and probably a few more countries.

      Wonder what the regulations really are.

      The DNS system is pretty much full of inconsistencies anyway (.tv, .cx, hmm what else?). I once had an idea how they can be arranged to be more logical, but change would just confuse oh-the-so-numerous websurfing grandmothers of the world.

      --
      What time is it/will be over there? Check with my iPhone app!
    2. Re:.co.uk by abardsley · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The .de thing is just a choice by the registrar.
      Nominet chooses to have the subdomains (which is
      fair enough).

      Using UK rather than GB is an historical accident, but I usu. feel compelled to point it out ;)

      As for countries selling there domains, well, that's their choice.

  13. OK, I accept the challenge. by caluml · · Score: 4, Funny

    In fact, no one runs parliament.uk and it doesn't officially exist. OK, go on, you twisted my arm. For a mere £78k per annum, and a lifetime seat in the House of Lords, I'll oversee the running of this tld.

    Obviously, I'll need a 155Mb pipe, and all the leggy blondes I can eat. (So to speak.) Oh, and a nice quiet office somewhere :)

    --
    Get your own free personal location tracker
  14. Re:.co.uk - GB not UK by abardsley · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Of course, the question should be why doesn't the UK use its *real* ISO country code GB instead of UK.

  15. Time to think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is a time to think why USA doesn't use .us and com.us, org.us, ac.us, gov.us more often.

    This is 2003. It's not 1988 when USA had 90% of the inet.

    Is it a flame bait? Or is a bait to all sane people the fact that I stress?

    1. Re:Time to think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Its simple: The US invented it, lock, stock and barrel. Well, not exactly. Al Gore did. But, he is an American.

      The naming conventions in use now have been in use in the US for 20+ years. Changing existing addresses would be confusing, add little value, and would largely be an exercise in political correctness. Anyone is largely free to use the existing tlds if they want to register. The country domains have been popular as a means of differentiating a domain, and associating it with a place, not necessarily because they have to. There are .us addresses in use, but it is mainly local governments and schools. (I will also add that it used to be tied to an inconvenient geographic naming convention.)

      You could treat our use of the current naming conventions as a minor tribute for funding and developing the internet. Or, if it makes you feel any better, you can view it as implied that .gov, .mil, .com, .org, .net, .etc, ;) are .us addresses. Or, we're just keeping .gov warm until the One World Government demands it.

      Of course, I suppose that the day will come when America will be bashed for internet address imperialism. Our unbounded use of domain names outside of .us will be viewed as an act of aggression and yet another reason to hate us. Demands will come that we retreat back inside the borders of .us.

      Ah, well, ... if the world doesn't like it, I guess we could just take our internet and go home.

      Of course that would lead to howls about American pr0n embargos, and threats of trade sanctions until we reopen the internet pr0n pipes. Of course, there will be world-wide joy AND rage over both actions. Violence will ensue. Counter-violence will follow the violence.

      Sigh. I guess we can't win.

      The only reasonably safe course of action is to not change anything.

    2. Re:Time to think by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I work for a multinational. All of our domains are .com or .net. For example, the servers we have in London got .co.uk as an afterthought.

      It's not just the US that uses .com, it's the whole globe.

      The only exception (in our case) is Japan... always .co.jp. I dunno why, maybe that's preferred in Japan.

  16. Possession by _fuzz_ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    They say that possession is 9/10 of the law. I think the fact that they've had the domain for 9 years should be proof enough that they own it.

    --
    47% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
    1. Re:Possession by damiam · · Score: 5, Funny
      possession is 9/10 of the law

      Yes, but Parliament is 10/10 of the law, and it's not helping them. Thawte is a private company, and it can set whatever qualifications it wants for a cert.

      --
      It's hard to be religious when certain people are never incinerated by bolts of lightning.
    2. Re:Possession by shepd · · Score: 4, Informative

      >That doesn't count on any court ever existed on earth. If I get your house because you were on vacation for 9 years doesn't make me an owner.

      No, that's where you're quite wrong.

      Since we're talking about the UK, squatters rule. In fact, this attitude seems to pervail in about 25% of the world (europe). AFAIK, the idea that squatters have no rights at all is part of an EXTREME minority of the world (about 5% of the world's population).

      Posession is very much 9/10s of the law. Any lawyer will tell you that, and it's about the only true thing they'll ever tell you.

      I had this discussion earlier: What if part of the space shuttle that just blew up landed on your property and you chose to keep it, violating laws against meddling with federal investigations? What powers does the government have to recover it (no, not just put you in jail, but actually recover the item)? And if they do recover it, how much will you be able to sue for?

      Posession of anything that isn't outright illegal is 9/10s of the law. That's why there's special "drug war" laws that allow the government to take your drug paraphenalia. Without them, upon release from prison, they'd have to hand your bong/crack pipe back, because they're yours.

      --
      If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
  17. Re:.co.uk - GB not UK by skington · · Score: 5, Informative

    There was a discussion about this on the Nominet mailing lists recently. The most convincing reason is Northern Ireland.

    The official name of the UK is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. "Great Britain" is the island that includes England, Wales, Scotland and the multitude of little islands, which includes the Isle of Wight (part of England), the Isle of Man (not really part of the UK at all), and doesn't include the Channel Islands (which are closest to Normandy, which the French refer to as the Anglo-Norman islands, but otherwise are as British as the Isle of Man).

    "GB" would be a useful code, except that it excludes Northern Ireland, and if you've followed Northern Irish history at all you'll know that the the protestants / Unionists in Northern Ireland are very fond of being part of the UK, and would vehemently protest to the UK being known by a code, "GB", that explicitly did not include them.

    So, way before ICANN's official policy to use the ISO country codes for ccTLDs, and even though Ukraine had a strong claim to .uk, the powers that be decided on using .uk for British domains, and it's stuck ever since.

  18. Lots of Domains Like This. by ClickNMix · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you read the article you might come across the section that sats:

    there was no contract between Nominet and the registrants of domain names registered by the "Naming Committee" - the loose assortment of tech-heads that existed prior to Nominet.

    Since, at one point you didnt have to pay for .co.uk domains, you just submitted to the commitee, and if they liked you they voted that you could have the domain and use it. (There might be more to it, I was only 16 when the ISP I was working for was doing this!! - But I do belive thats the gist)

    There was also a 'limbo' of about 24 hours when the Naming commity handed over to Nominet, where people could register anything (No more voting by the committee), for free(Because Nominet werent charing yet).. but there is no paper work of any kind for these domains. (One of which I own - But cann't prove and not sure how to go about getting it back into my full control!)

    There's also been several court cases I know about because of this lack of paperwork, and people selling domains they may or may not have been the owners off.

    Since you never have to pay for these domains, you dont even have the invoices, no renewal fees etc. They just exist. Some are no doubt lost forever because people have just left them behind, and theres nothing to remind anyone about them.

    --
    I saw the light at the end of the tunnel... But it was just someone with a flashlight bringing more work.