"Secure" Shorter .uk Internet Domain Proposed

another random user writes with an excerpt from the BBC about a new proposal to issue top level .uk domains, for a price: "The scheme would give businesses the chance to register www.name.uk as their web address. It would run alongside the current www.name.co.uk service. Applicants would have to prove they had a UK presence and pay a higher fee. A three-month consultation is under way. Some companies may oppose the move on the grounds they already face having to buy other new net addresses. Eleanor Bradley, Nominet's director of operations, stressed that the idea was 'not a money marking exercise' and that any additional earnings derived would be passed onto an independent trust to invest in improving Internet access and security."

Comments

Dumb shit

[Anonymous Coward]

More money racket, yay

3 minutes , 1 comment?

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Wow.

What happened to /.?

Re:3 minutes , 1 comment?

[Nyder]

Wow.

What happened to /.?

We are all celebrating the 15th anniversary, too busy to check for new posts.

Re:3 minutes , 1 comment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow.

What happened to /.?

Sorry, certain topics do have their shock value...especially those with fucking absurd remarks suggesting that new TLD proposals somehow aren't a "money making exercise". Who the the fuck do they think they're fooling...

Subdomains

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh man. If I lived in the UK I would so buy app.uk and other domains like that just so I could charge a fortune on sub domains that every company would pretty much have to buy to prevent defamation and being behind on the times.

Re:Subdomains

[c_g_hills]

One of the rules is that you are not permitted to sell third-level domains (3LD) underneath a second-level domain (2LD) in the proposed plan.

Not if your name is "F"

[Taco Cowboy]

With this short name top domain - http://f.uk/ would come handy

Re:Not if your name is "F"

[game kid]

Maybe I should move to the UK and change my surname to Dumbf.

Re:Not if your name is "F"

[Impy the Impiuos Imp]

www.OffIF

Lordy, this is almost as good as .to

Re:Not if your name is "F"

[epSos-de]

I am working on it. p.uk s.uk were my other ideas.

Re:Not if your name is "F"

[jones_supa]

With this short name top domain - http://f.uk/ would come handy

If the enterprises of Korea (*.co.kr) would follow the idea, they could establish fu.kr.

Australia

[Bandraginus]

This would work similarly to how the .com.au works in Australia. I know there's numerous work-arounds, but for the most part you need an ABN (Australian Business Number) registered for the domain name you're after.
I'm not a fan, but it has reduced much of the cyber squatting and other issues (sorry, can't site sources).

Re:Australia

[FireFury03]

This would work similarly to how the .com.au works in Australia. I know there's numerous work-arounds, but for the most part you need an ABN (Australian Business Number) registered for the domain name you're after.

I'm not a fan, but it has reduced much of the cyber squatting and other issues (sorry, can't site sources).

This is what the .ltd.uk TLD is supposed to do, and AFAIK you have to prove you're a registered limited company. However, I don't think I've ever seen anyone use this TLD.

Rather than inventing TLDs at random, what is needed is some kind of joined up thinking on how best to structure domain names so that the TLD actually reflects something useful and doesn't just result in each company having to register their domain name under every TLD in existence.

For example, categorising businesses based on TLD would be vaguely sensible - e.g. fred.plumber.glasgow.uk for your friendly local plumber in glasgow... (yes, I know, its not short and catchy, but in a world where there are probably lots of businesses called "Fred's Plumbing", "Fred's Butcher", etc they can't all have fred.com).

Re:Australia

[hippo]

I did www.corky.ltd.uk since www.corky.co.uk was taken. Let it lapse as LinkedIn is better for what I want. I can always get it back whenever I want since I own "Corky and Co ltd" in the UK. .ltd.uk was a very good idea, guaranteed to be free from squatters or name clashes as it is basically a copy of the companies house register which every company goes through before it can start trading. Bit since there's no money to be made from squatting and trading there is no money to promote it and .co.uk gets the attention.

Speaking of TLDs and

[Compaqt]

secondary level domains:

How about an Ltd secondary level domain? It would cover limited companies (corporations). Since this namespace is already controlled (you can't have the same name as another corp, AFAIK), you would automatically be allocated "your" domain name. That, or it would be reserved for your purchase.

So, you'd have britishgas.ltd.uk

In the US, it could be
westerntrucking.inc.us
Or
westertrucking.inc

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Anonymous Coward]

.ltd.uk (and .plc.uk) do, in fact, exist.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Anonymous Coward]

secondary level domains:

How about an Ltd secondary level domain? It would cover limited companies (corporations). Since this namespace is already controlled (you can't have the same name as another corp, AFAIK), you would automatically be allocated "your" domain name.

Unique in namespace A -> unique in namespace B depends on collision-free translation -- since DNS labels are restricted to 63 octets, are case-insensitive, and have other practical or conventional considerations, it's not clear that a usable translation will guarantee uniqueness.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[FireFury03]

secondary level domains:

How about an Ltd secondary level domain? It would cover limited companies (corporations). Since this namespace is already controlled (you can't have the same name as another corp, AFAIK), you would automatically be allocated "your" domain name. That, or it would be reserved for your purchase.

So, you'd have britishgas.ltd.uk

.ltd.uk already exists, but I've never seen anyone actually use it.

However, you're wrong on this preventing namespace collisions - companies are allowed to have the same name so long as they are in completely different lines of business (so there is no confusion).

Also, the trading names of limited companies are often not the same as the limited company name itself, so this probably doesn't help too much. e.g. there are probably quite a few shops that trade as "Village Grocers" or similar, but they can't all have that as their limited company name. Similarly, a single limited company may own several distinct business units trading under different names, which may either be an intentional attempt to segregate the business in the eyes of the customer (this is often a good thing if those shops specialise in different things - the customer knows which shop to go to for the thing they want without needing to care whether they are run by the same company or not), or may be through aquisition (its common for merged businesses to continue trading under separate names to avoid customer confusion, even though they have merged to become a single limited company).

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Compaqt]

Well, but the shops trading as "Village Grocer" aren't limited companies, right? They would have to fend for themselves in the general UK namespace, or perhaps a lower administrative level namespace (like state domains in the US).

Secondly, I didn't know that corporations could have exactly the same name. There's Ford Motors and Ford Models, but, again, they are differentiated. So it would be:
fordmotors.ltd.uk and
fordmodels.ltd.uk
Not
ford.ltd.uk

Also, as for trade names, they would not fall under the ltd namespace because they are not corporation names. For tradenames, there could be a separate tm namespaced ("trademark"). So consumer-goods corp Unilever would get:
unilever.ltd.uk,
but for their products like Dove soap, it would be:
dove.tm.uk
sun.tm.uk

If the authorities deemed it necessary, they could mandate specification of the business line for which you have a trademark:
dovesoap.tm.uk
suncomputer.tm.uk

They could also optionally try to get a good domain name in the general namespace:
dovesoap.co.uk

Another think we might move to in the future is to specify an exact request for a domain name when you file your incorporation papers. That would be an official domain name, at which you could be serviced legally for legal notices, too.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Anonymous Coward]

If the company's name is registered as a brand it cannot be used by other people in any other line of business at all

(at least here in the EU)...

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Going_Digital]

WRONG, A trademark is registered in a classification, other people can register the same term in different categories. So you may register 'codfather' as fish restaurant, but someone else can register that same term as movie character or as fishing vacation organizer.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[BeardedChimp]

However, you're wrong on this preventing namespace collisions - companies are allowed to have the same name so long as they are in completely different lines of business (so there is no confusion).

Actually you are wrong, you are confusing this with trademark law.

From Companies house:

You may not be able to incorporate your chosen company name if it is the 'same as' another name appearing on the registrar's index of company names. There is an exception to this if an existing company (or LLP or other body on the index) is part of the same group as your company and consents to the use of your proposed name

You are however correct that not all companies use their registered names as their trading name

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[FireFury03]

Well, but the shops trading as "Village Grocer" aren't limited companies, right?

I would expect them to be. Frankly, anyone running a vaguely sizable business as a sole trader is an idiot - as soon as you start employing people you'd be crazy not to register as a limited company.

Also, as for trade names, they would not fall under the ltd namespace because they are not corporation names.

That was my point, because it makes the .ltd.uk namespace far less useful by virtue of the fact that your domain name is not necessarilly obvious to your customers. Your customers know you by your trading name, not your limited company name - if they want to find you on the web, which do you think they will look for?

For tradenames, there could be a separate tm namespaced ("trademark").

Again, tradenames are only protected from collisions within their specific sector. For example, the tradename "Apple" is owned by both Apple Records and Apple Computers, and this is ok because Apple Records deals with music and not computers, whiles Apple Computers deals with computers and not music... (right? right? ahhem :)

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[xaxa]

Here you are: https://www.google.co.uk/search?client=opera&rls=en-GB&q=site:.ltd.uk+OR+site:.plc.uk

It's much less popular than .co.uk.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Compaqt]

Right, I was going to bring up Apple.

Originally, you had "Apple Corps Ltd", a British company. And "Apple Computer, Inc", a US company.

So you would have:
applecorps.ltd.uk and
applecomputer.ltd.uk
Not
apple.ltd.uk
I.e., the full name, which is always (?) unique in a given jurisdiction.

That's sort of complicated now that CA Apple finally paid off UK Apple, and changed their name to Apple Inc. The terms of that agreement might have a bearing on domain allocation in this proposed system.

Another consideration is that Apple Corps Ltd (before the agreement) might have been said to have had a stronger claim on the ltd.uk namespace, if at all it was going to conflict, because it is a domestic corporation. And Apple, Inc. would have a stronger claim to apple.inc.us.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[zandeez]

ltd.uk already exists, as does plc.uk. Nowhere seems to sell them, though.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[FireFury03]

Right, I was going to bring up Apple.

Originally, you had "Apple Corps Ltd", a British company. And "Apple Computer, Inc", a US company.

My comment was more specifically related to the GP's proposed .tm.uk domain for trademarks, whereby Apple Records and Apple Computers could both legitimately claim apple.tm.uk since they both hold that trademark.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Compaqt]

Right, obscure enough that people are independently "inventing" them. Whoever thought them up did good thing, though.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Anonymous Coward]

'same as' in quotes as it technically means 'very similar to' not 'identical to'

Companies are free to complain to Companies House if they feel a new company is registering a name too similar to their own and in doing so can block that registration. The new company then has to register under another name.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[petermgreen]

The problem is while full company names IIRC do have to be unique they often contain spaces, brackets and other mess and are often very different from the companies normal trading name. If you stipped the spaces, brackets etc you would end up with something reasonablly unique but I don't think it would be something most people would want to have as their domain name.

Re:Speaking of TLDs and

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, this is the best idea I have heard in ages.
Here in Canada (and I am sure most other places too) I have to pay an annual fee to 'register' my company. The entire process consists of logging in, clicking ok on a web form and then paying $35.
I doubt that the service costs that much to run. I bet most of this fee goes into general revenue. So why not provide a domain for every registered company? Then you have the certainty you are looking for with no added cost.
It would provide more certainty because it is much harder and more costly to set up a company than it is to register a domain name. Maintenance is also a hassle: you have to file annoying things like tax returns.

FTFY

[girlintraining]

"Any additional earnings derived would be passed onto an independent trust to invest in improving Internet access and security."

Ah, so what you're saying is, in five years or so when there's a big fat bank account out there earmarked for improving internet access and security, long after the original promise that it would be used for that purpose has moved out of the public eye, some bureaucrat will redirect the funds to some other public works project. Let's be honest here: Everybody talks about improving internet access and security, but how much of the money set aside for actually doing it, er, actually does it? Look at the sad state of affairs as it sits today, then realize that every broken security model, application, and piss-poor internet feed was created with the promise of being far more than it turned out to be.

Re:FTFY

[pod]

Obviously no such thing will happen. Money will go into general revenues, never to be seen again. Numerous empty promises and hand waving about improving Internet access will be made.

It's annoying enough already with cybersquatters buying up every domain in sight, there's just no need to add yet another one to the mix. If it was really not about a money grab, they would just give every .co.uk registrant the equivalent .uk domain at no cost, and then phase out .co.uk. Yeah, I don't see that one happening.

Re:FTFY

[mwvdlee]

Let's be honest here: Everybody talks about improving internet access and security, but how much of the money set aside for actually doing it, er, actually does it?

A lot of money is spent on internet logging and wiretapping. That makes internet more secure. Well... it makes it more secure for the government anyway, in the same way that locking up dissidents makes the internet more secure for a government.
Banning individual users with some three-strikes law could be considered "improving internet access" if you're the type of government that thinks such a law should exist.

Re:FTFY

[Rogerborg]

Oh, I doubt they'll let any money accumulate. Any "independent trust" will be run by husbands and wives of the Nominet cabal, and they'll find creative ways to cross "consult" with each other. That's just how Things Are Done.

Re:FTFY

[91degrees]

some bureaucrat will redirect the funds to some other public works project.

Why? Does this sort of thing happen a lot with nominet? I haven't heard a lot of stories about the organisation being inherently corrupt.

Yet another domain name cash grab

[epp_b]

Sure, having the simpler .uk TLD makes sense, but charging extra for it is pretty clearly a cash grab. The explanation for the higher fee is transparent BS.

Re:Yet another domain name cash grab

[mcrbids]

Cash grab? How does this not describe any and all new TLDs?

Really, there's no reason why there couldn't be a consortium of TLDs in a peer/peer style where all TLDs are shared. In this scenario, I could create a TLD at random, pay the peering fees, and be in business.

There's no technical reason why there's a limit on TLDs other than convention, and the guys who've (almost accidentally) inherited the benefits of that convention. *cough* ICANN *cough*

Re:Yet another domain name cash grab

[Anonymous Coward]

For .UK it's not about making profit, it's all to do with increasing cash flow so a few over-paid people can claim higher bonuses.

Anyone can run a monopoly.

Like .ca for Canada?

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't Canada already do something similar with the *.ca domain?

Re:Like .ca for Canada?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes.

Re:Like .ca for Canada?

[corychristison]

While I don't understand the point of this comment, I will bite. *.ca is open in the same was of *.com, *.net, *.org, *.info, and so on and so forth.

Back in the day *.ca used to offer the two-char code for each of the provinces/territories as second level domains, eg: *.bc.ca for British Coloumbia, *.on.ca for Ontario. However this model has been abandoned and new registrations for the second leve TLD's are no longer accepted. Previously registered second level dot CA's are protected in that if I want to register crazydomain.ca but crazydomain.on.ca is already registered, the top level domain cannot be registered. It may be possible if you can prove you are not a direct competitor to crazydomain.on.ca, trying to steal visitors away (anti-competitive), but that sounds like a lot of work and a total pain.

Disclaimer: I am Canadian and own a handful of *.ca domain names. That's about it.

Re:Like .ca for Canada?

[Que_Ball]

It was possible to register the same name with a different province but the original owner would have to give you written permission first so it was less likely to occur. I can find a few examples where two different companies did get their provincial level domain and now one of them has claimed the second level domain. But it's very rare. Most of the time if another company wanted to register the domain in their province and the system told them it was unavailable they wouldn't pursue it further and try to get permission, they would just pick something else.

So yes, owning mydomain.ab.ca used to mean that the system would not allow anyone else to register mydomain.bc.ca or mydomain.ca. They used to require proof that your corporation was registered nationwide before they would let you use the second level national domain but they would reserve all variations on second and third levels of your domain name automatically. When the system switched to putting all domains at the second level then most of those provincial domain name owners got their second level name registered. They can keep the historical old one and keep paying for it or let it expire and only keep the second level version. There was no discount or extra costs for second or third level domains. They never tried to kick up the costs to register the second level domains.

Maybe the UK could handle their second level domains the same way? I mean they still get the extra money from people who decide to keep both versions but at least they are not raising the pricing.

'S'ecure UK?

[Anonymous Coward]

I was hoping for something more like my.citybank.suk

Re:'S'ecure UK?

[Amouth]

i had the same idea, just with something else, I wish i had mod points.

Donate earnings to EFF

[Anonymous Coward]

why a new trust ?

EU Regulations

[whoever57]

If my company is in the EU, but not the UK, I can't get a ".uk" domain name? Doesn't that violate EU rules?

Re:EU Regulations

[FireFury03]

If my company is in the EU, but not the UK, I can't get a ".uk" domain name? Doesn't that violate EU rules?

Can you get a UK postal address? If not, doesn't that violate EU rules?
(I don't think there is any EU rule that says a French business (for example) has a right to try to convince their British customers that they are based in the UK even when they aren't).

Sure, you can pay a UK business to use their postal address and forward mail to you, and similarly you could pay a UK business to let you use their domain name.
You can probably pay the Royal Mail to hold a PO Box for you, but a PO Box address is extremely obviously a PO Box rather than a real address.

Re:EU Regulations

[mpe]

If my company is in the EU, but not the UK, I can't get a ".uk" domain name?

Amazon S.a.r.L manages to have amazon.co.uk., amazon.de., amazon.fr., etc. But not amazon.lu. Even though they are actually based in Luxembourg.

Re:EU Regulations

[Plunky]

You can probably pay the Royal Mail to hold a PO Box for you, but a PO Box address is extremely obviously a PO Box rather than a real address.

Having used a Royal Mail PO box in the past, I can say that its not that easy to set up such a thing unless you tell lies. You do need to already have a valid postal address in the post town that the PO box will be (a pain for me.. living on a boat, I wanted a postal address in a town that I did not have a valid street address in). Also, you can have the street addressed mail automatically diverted to your PO box, so that it is not obviously a PO box, which is also useful since banks at least won't allow your registered address to be a PO box.

Re:EU Regulations

[dkf]

If my company is in the EU, but not the UK, I can't get a ".uk" domain name?

Amazon S.a.r.L manages to have amazon.co.uk., amazon.de., amazon.fr., etc. But not amazon.lu. Even though they are actually based in Luxembourg.

Amazon have multiple UK business addresses (and probably also in the other countries you list too), but they just don't officially use them for handling the sales-to-consumers side of their trading. If you need to return something though, you won't be sending it to the Luxembourg operation...

Re:EU Regulations

[FireFury03]

Having used a Royal Mail PO box in the past, I can say that its not that easy to set up such a thing unless you tell lies. You do need to already have a valid postal address in the post town that the PO box will be

Doesn't the RM offer regionless PO Boxes? I'm pretty sure I've seen addresses published which are just "Company Name, PO BOX 123" without a town.

Also, you can have the street addressed mail automatically diverted to your PO box, so that it is not obviously a PO box, which is also useful since banks at least won't allow your registered address to be a PO box.

Well, in the context of this discussion, if you had a real street address in the UK then you wouldn't need to worry about a PO Box anyway.

Re:EU Regulations

[Plunky]

Doesn't the RM offer regionless PO Boxes? I'm pretty sure I've seen addresses published which are just "Company Name, PO BOX 123" without a town.

not as far as I know: you might be thinking of freepost, which can use "freepost name" as the entire address.

Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[petsounds]

Theoretically, all country codes, including 'co.uk', should be policed and only given out to residents. Hell, I remember in the mid-90's when I felt ethically conflicted because I was registering a .net domain and I wasn't running a network. ICANN hasn't properly administered the TLDs since day one.

But sure, why not? The USA has a '.us' domain (whose owner info, by the way, cannot be anonymized), so I don't see why the UK shouldn't have one.

Re:Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[Cimexus]

Yeah it's kinda sad that TLDs haven't been properly managed. In my mind it would have been ideal if .com was kept only for companies (and global/international companies at that - if you just have a local company you should be in .com.cctld or .co.cctld etc.). And if .net, .org etc. were similarly managed. Seems like the only one that have been properly managed are .edu, .mil, .gov.

Having said that it depends on the country. Australia for instance has administered the domains under its .au ccTLD quite well. Getting a .com.au does require you to be a registered Australian business, and .org.au, .asn.au, .edu.au, .gov.au etc. are all properly restricted too. I think .net.au is about the only one that's fairly open. It also helps that Australia has a TLD for individuals (.id.au), which is sorely lacking in most places and led to people's random personal sites and blogs etc. ending up on .coms and .nets in the first place.

Re:Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Frankly the problem goes much deeper than mismanagement. When any joe with enough money on a credit card can punch in a bunch of domains in a website to check if their available and claim the ones they want without any questions asked it's a huge problem if we ever expect to get the stupid shit that goes on the internet sorted out. The real problem however is that no one really wants to hire a bunch of people to review cases, it just doesn't fit with the business model that websites like domain.com have built.

If it were up to me, I'd have a neutral organization that has no other job than taking submissions for domains and performing follow ups every couple months to ensure they're being used for whatever purposes were stated in the application. Having such an organization would solve a whole lot of problems with the internet. But maintaining neutrality in an organization with such power would be a task unto itself.

Re:Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[dkf]

Theoretically, all country codes, including 'co.uk', should be policed and only given out to residents. Hell, I remember in the mid-90's when I felt ethically conflicted because I was registering a .net domain and I wasn't running a network. ICANN hasn't properly administered the TLDs since day one.

ICANN doesn't police the CC TLDs and never has other than to state who is the registrar, where they virtually always follow direction from the country concerned (ICANN getting deeply involved with that side of things would guarantee that the UN jumps in). The policing of CC TLD has always been up to the registrar and their policies; some are very strict about it, others are much more lax.

But sure, why not? The USA has a '.us' domain (whose owner info, by the way, cannot be anonymized), so I don't see why the UK shouldn't have one.

The issue is that the UK has always used another level below .uk in names (a hold-over from the old pre-IP days) and that's now proposed to change, together with stricter rules on who can have them and higher charges (though the current lax regime will remain for .co.uk; I RTFA after all). I've no idea whether there will be anonymization of contact details, but I'd hope not as the service is aimed at companies. Anyone deciding that they need a vanity address for their personal website in the corporate space can deal with the consequences.

Re:Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[unixisc]

Since they have .uk for UK, would they also have .eng for England, .sct for Scotland, .wls for Wales & .ni for Northern Ireland? Would be another domain name rush

On a different note, on the .TLD front, why not require that every generic TLD we currently have - .com, .org, .net, .gov, .edu, .mil be preceded by the country TLD to which it belongs? Thereby, one would have things like nasa.us.gov, mit.us.edu, oxford.eng.edu, dod.us.mil and so on. For the ones that already exist, alias them to such a new system, so that those handful of TLDs are generic. After that, there should be less of a proliferation of TLDs. And they all get to be managed by different countries. Only exceptions would be international organizations, like un.gov, nato.mil and so on.

Re:Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[YttriumOxide]

On a different note, on the .TLD front, why not require that every generic TLD we currently have - .com, .org, .net, .gov, .edu, .mil be preceded by the country TLD to which it belongs? Thereby, one would have things like nasa.us.gov, mit.us.edu, oxford.eng.edu, dod.us.mil and so on. For the ones that already exist, alias them to such a new system, so that those handful of TLDs are generic. After that, there should be less of a proliferation of TLDs. And they all get to be managed by different countries. Only exceptions would be international organizations, like un.gov, nato.mil and so on.

With the large amount of international companies, you don't really gain much. The company I work for, Konica Minolta, has the following:

• - Global headquarters, company based in Japan and website hosted in Japan, but NOT specifically for Japan.
• - Japanese domestic company, company based in Japan, website hosted in Japan, and intended for Japanese market. Reports to Global headquarters.
• - European headquarters, company based in Germany, website hosted in Germany, but intended for entire European market, not just Germany. Reports to Global headquarters.
• - German domestic company, company based in Germany, website hosted in Germany (by EU HQ), and intended for German market. Reports to European Headquarters.
• - French domestic company, company based in France, website hosted in Germany (by EU HQ), and intended for French market. Reports to European Headquarters.
• - UK domestic company, company based in UK, website hosted in Germany (by EU HQ), and intended for UK market. Reports to European Headquarters.
• - New Zealand domestic company, company based in New Zealand, website probably hosted in New Zealand and intended for New Zealand market. Reports to Global headquarters.

  And of course many many more for each country where we have a direct presence.

  Under the system you propose, we'd have to keep our Global HQ site as is; and then simply add a ".com" after each of the others (and since countries like NZ with ".co.nz", AU with ".com.au" and UK with ".co.uk" already have this sort of system; you're essentially just proposing to change from ".co.nz" to ".nz.com" and from ".com.au" to ".au.com" which is annoying to the people there and also kind of pointless).
  Also, what do you propose be done for the "eu" situation? Should for example German companies become ".de.eu.com"? or just ".de.com"? If the former; what happens when new countries join the EU or countries leave? And if the latter, how do you propose current ".eu" are handled? As ".eu.com"? And if so, how is it any more clear under this system than the one we currently have?

  Basically speaking, I think the system you're proposing would be a huge pain to implement and then offer absolutely no benefits whatsoever over the current messy system we already have.

Re:Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[Anonymous Coward]

We already have *.gov.uk (for example http://direct.gov.uk). For universities we have *.ac.uk (for example http://www.dur.ac.uk).

Re:Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Theoretically, all country codes, including 'co.uk', should be policed and only given out to residents.

This is how it works with .ca actually. The registrar (CIRA) has made a conscious choice when it comes to 'branding' the ccTLD to focus on it being limited to Canadian citizens and businesses. If you go to to www.example.ca, you can feel fairly confident that you're visiting someone that has a Canadian presence of some kind.

Personally I think it's a pretty good way to distinguish it from all the other TLDs.

Re:Fine, but then enforce all country TLDs

[Rozzin]

why not require that every generic TLD we currently have - .com, .org, .net, .gov, .edu, .mil be preceded by the country TLD to which it belongs? Thereby, one would have things like nasa.us.gov, mit.us.edu, oxford.eng.edu, dod.us.mil and so on. For the ones that already exist, alias them to such a new system, so that those handful of TLDs are generic. After that, there should be less of a proliferation of TLDs. And they all get to be managed by different countries. Only exceptions would be international organizations, like un.gov, nato.mil and so on.

OK, what happens when a person owning a domain moves to a different country?

I PROPOSE .FUK INSTEAD !!

[Anonymous Coward]

This way, you can be sure !! Of what, you ask? Of it being it, of course !! How else can you be assured it is what it is, if not being what it is, as it is ?? Be afraid no more !! .FUK is for you !!

Domain silliness is infectious.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems the madness behind ICANN's "lets have TLDs for everything" policy is infecting Nominet as well.

The current .uk structure is clear, simple, and very well understood by domain owners and the general public. The proposals here would undermine that entirely, with precisely zero gain to anyone.

Nominet is basically in a no-win situation.

They're supposed to be a not-for-profit service, but they sell a product with unlimited supply and zero overheads.

They're also under constant pressure from industry vested interests, particularly the domainers, who would love nothing better than to have more domains to sell.

The higher price is an interesting aspect. Makes it sound like they're trying to justify themselves.

Re:Domain silliness is infectious.

[Chrisq]

The current .uk structure is clear, simple, and very well understood by domain owners and the general public.

Exactly, I predict a lot of "silly" registrations that domain name companies will convince you that you must have; "england.uk", "scotland.uk", "wales.uk", "gb.uk", "uk.uk", "com.uk", and "xxx.uk" to name a few.

Re:Domain silliness is infectious.

[91degrees]

Why is that so silly? The .com has become virtually meaningless. It's just an indicator that something is on the internet. The "lets have TLDs for everything" policy is basically a plan to eliminate the redundant .com.

Similarly the .co part of the UK domain is pointless. Why bother to have it at all? It's not being used the way it was intended.

Re:Domain silliness is infectious.

[Ash-Fox]

Exactly, I predict a lot of "silly" registrations that domain name companies will convince you that you must have; "england.uk", "scotland.uk", "wales.uk", "gb.uk", "uk.uk", "com.uk", and "xxx.uk" to name a few.

Nominet is proposing to prohibit successful direct.uk applicants from reselling sub-domains created at the third level. Registrants will still be permitted to create sub-domains for their own use.

Its stated reason for this restriction is

âoeHowever, we also wish to ensure the integrity of the direct.uk space and to avoid customer and registrant confusion and would thus seek to minimise abuse and contractually prevent the sale of sub-domains by registrants to third parties.â â" Nominet consultation paper, p.11

Re:Domain silliness is infectious.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that so silly? The .com has become virtually meaningless. It's just an indicator that something is on the internet. The "lets have TLDs for everything" policy is basically a plan to eliminate the redundant .com.

.biz? .info? and a bunch of others. It['s already failed on a small scale. Why would it succeed on a massive scale? A few dozen big companies will get vanity TLDs to show off with (but they'll keep their .com site, and most visitors will continue using it). A handful of niche markets will get TLDs that will go largely unused, and the rest of us will just get on with life as we have before with most sites we visit regularly being a .com.

Similarly the .co part of the UK domain is pointless. Why bother to have it at all? It's not being used the way it was intended.

The .co part is *not* useless. It's part of a rational namespace system, that also includes .gov.uk, .ltd.uk, .plc.uk, .police.uk, .school.uk, name.uk, and numerous others. Sure, .co.uk may be the biggest of those namespaces by a long way, but that doesn't mean the others are unimportant.

As a programmer, I've always been taught not to pollute the global namespace, but that's exactly what's being planned here.

And in general .co.uk is being used the way it was intended. Like .com, it has been polluted by non corporate entities such as private home pages, but that goes back to the fact that it's got a widespread mindshare among the British people. People know it, even non technical people.

And I'll ask again: what exactly is the gain here: who wins? Just like every other attempt to open up the domain name system, all that will happen is that it'll become a magnet for domain squatters and companies will have to have yet another domain they have to buy.

I used to work for a company that managed domain portfolios for large corps. I left before the big TLD expansion project was fully in swing, but I can tell you that our customers were dreading it. Not one of them was in favor.

When the Colombians decided to allow .co domains to be bought by people outside the country, what happened? Did we suddenly find we had loads more domain space available for everyone? Of course not; we had exactly the same domain space we had before, but everyone had to buy it twice. The thought of having three hundred new TLDs to deal with was not something they wanted to hear.

Re:Domain silliness is infectious.

[91degrees]

.biz? .info? and a bunch of others. It['s already failed on a small scale. Why would it succeed on a massive scale?

Because you need to get interest from several companies. They want a .com. Exactly one company will want a .microsoft, and one will want a .amazon, and one will want a .google. They're not trying to sell the subdomains.

The "rational domain name system" would be rational if people used it the way it was. But they don't! And there's no way to to make them. Nor should they. Technology should adapt to how people want to use it, we shouldn't force people to adapt to the technology.

People don't go for .co.uk and .com because they're companies. They do for marketing reasons. To most people it simply means "internet". So why bother with it at all?

As a programmer, I've always been taught not to pollute the global namespace, but that's exactly what's being planned here.

Why not? why is it so much better to pollute the second level namespace?

And I'll ask again: what exactly is the gain here: who wins? Just like every other attempt to open up the domain name system, all that will happen is that it'll become a magnet for domain squatters and companies will have to have yet another domain they have to buy.

The companies that can distinguish themselves from arbitrary domains benefit. Also the people who want to avoid domain name squatters. It's not about selling the subdomains. In fact they're actively preventing that.

The thought of having three hundred new TLDs to deal with was not something they wanted to hear.

They won't. They'll have at most, two! .company and .company.uk. If it catches on, they can eventually ditch the .com, and certainly all the other stupid tlds.

One thing to watch for

[Chrisq]

One thing to watch for is that browsers will treat anything.uk as a tld. If you register myco.uk you will not be able to share cookies between myco.uk, accounts.myco.uk, and presentations.myco.uk in the same way that you could with the ...myco.co.uk addresses.

Re:One thing to watch for

[Anonymous Coward]

This problem already came up the likes of "foobar.co.uk" trying to set cookies for ".co.uk". Mozilla started the http://publicsuffix.org/ project in response, which Firefox now use to do TLD detection.

WHATEVER.co.uk versus WHATEVER.uk

[daveewart]

This will be chaotic. End-user confusion or fraud will occur when WHATEVER.co.uk and WHATEVER.uk are owned by different people/organisations. Say, when the .uk domain is acquired by someone who accuses another of domain-squatting on the co.uk equivalent.

Also, the notes say that the extra costs will be used for: "[D]aily monitoring for malicious software and viruses" - monitoring of what, exactly? All pages of all web sites on all subdomains?

Re:WHATEVER.co.uk versus WHATEVER.uk

[Anonymous Coward]

Add to the confusion all the existing second level domains: .ac.uk, .co.uk, .gov.uk, .judiciary.uk, .ltd.uk, .me.uk, .mod.uk, .net.uk, .nhs.uk, .nic.uk, .org.uk, .parliament.uk, .plc.uk, .police.uk, .sch.uk

So there's the potential for:

Pay your car tax / parking fine now at direct.gou.uk
Submit your bank details for your tax refund at taxrefund.parliment.uk
Register all your personal details at register.rnod.uk

mixed reaction

[Going_Digital]

The security part of this idea is dead before it was even thought of, how do you verify a UK address, oh send a letter in the post. Urrmm, never heard of mail forwarding services ? So lets make it more difficult for genuine people when letters go missing in the mail but make it blindingly easy for someone to abuse the system.

So now the general public will have a false sense of security with sites labeled as secure just because they have been scanned for 'known' malware. And what happens when their scanning technology generates false positives, who is going to take responsibility for lost business and reputation from having your site flagged as a security risk to visitors ? It is not nominets place to police the internet.

It does not matter if you are located in the UK or not, we live in a global economy and many corporations operate in many countries without a physical presence in that country, having a site customised for each region. What is important is protecting the domain system from cybersquatter's and domain hoarders that mess up the domain system for genuine users. The increased price is welcome as it goes some way towards making the domain prospecting business model unsustainable. But it needs to go further making it harder for cybersquatter's to register names that are trademarked.

... but its there already

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, not many but there are some .uk addresses already: bl.uk - the British Library - springs to mind and I remember that the UK test and cert body (for CE and TUV testing) had a .uk address.

Re:... but its there already

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, bl.uk, parliament.uk, and a few others were allocated right at the very beginning of the .uk TLD, before Nominet was put in charge and put the current namespacing system in place.

I recall a number of years ago there was a bit of a hiccup when the administrators of parliament.uk wanted to change some of the registration details, and found that it was impossible to do it because Nominet didn't have any record of it. Not sure if they ever managed to resolve that one. I guess they must have done given the current story.

.co should never have existed

[Anonymous Coward]

I still don't understand why there aren't proposals to eliminate it.
It is pointless.
Nobody uses the TLD designations correctly anyway, .co is pointless and a waste of letters and probably bandwidth too.
The problem, of course, is TLD exists separately from .co.tld sites as well.
THANKS ICANN'T, you sure fucked up again.

Scrap the whole damn system for IPv6 world transfer day.
It is worthless. DNS is crap. Use a more evolved version of newsgroup grouping and be done with it.
FORCE the grouping.
Have one TLD where it is simply called random, or unassigned, or something similar. Basically the current warzone of websites where people can register anything regardless.
Although to make it more fun, have random.wXXX.website, w being any number. I can't be the only one who remembers www1 subdomain wanker, right?
Now it is coming back in full force, even more in your face!
That should be the price you pay for messing with the DNS, a confusing name.
Meanwhile I will just go to uk.search.google/images/ and find some porn. Unless that gets moved to that country called XXX. Yeah, gotta love that country, wouldn't be surprised if a lamppost could suck you off. What's that road? You want to make babies? SURE!

EU wont allow that?

[emj]

I'm guessing it's not possible to require companies to have UK presence, given laws in EU. Even if it was allowed I must say it seems like a pretty feeble goal to set as well, there are always work around if you got money.

.co.uk is a unique advertisement for the UK

[concealment]

I hope they keep the .co.uk nomenclature, because it is like many other things idiosyncratic to that strange little island and its wonderfully unique people. When you see one of those addresses, it reminds you of the very English trait of liking order: tea at 11 sharp, queue up for fish 'n chips, and the domain name goes after the .co because it's commercial. God save the Queen!

Money making

[Anonymous Coward]

Eleanor Bradley, Nominet's director of operations, stressed that the idea was 'not a money marking exercise' and that any additional earnings derived would be passed onto an independent trust to invest in improving Internet access and security."

Trans. "this is a money making exercise, but we'll only pump the money into funding running ourselves"

Re:GnHaa

[Anonymous Coward]

BHSD's filesystem we get there with [goat.cx]

Seems legit.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

The TLD

[partyguerrilla]

for the cook islands is .co.ck

Re:Speaking of TLDs and .uk = .gb

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct TLD would be .gb anyways but it seems people are not ready yet to let go of monarchy...