"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

Re:3 minutes , 1 comment?

[Nyder]

Wow.

What happened to /.?

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

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.

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).

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

[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.

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

[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.

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*

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

[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: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.

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: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.