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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."

8 of 266 comments (clear)

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

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

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

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

  3. .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!
  4. 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.

  5. 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?

  6. 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.
  7. 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.