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Britain Gets National .uk Web Address

Posted by timothy on from the actually-top-level dept.

hypnosec (2231454) writes 'Starting today businesses and individuals in the UK will be able to register a new national web address (".uk") and drop their existing ".co.uk" or ".com" suffix in favour of a shorter and snappier domain name. The entire process along with the transition is being overseen by private yet not-for-profit organisation Nominet, which has already started notifying existing customers with a ".co.uk" domain of their chance to adopt a ".uk" domain. Nominet will reserve all ".uk" domain names, which already have a ".co.uk" counterparts, for the next five years offering registrants the chance to adopt the new domain and to keep cyber squatters at bay.'

21 of 111 comments (clear)

  1. In other words by rujasu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Everyone with a .co.uk domain name is now basically obligated to register (and pay for) another domain name within the next five years to avoid confusion.

    1. Re:In other words by just_another_sean · · Score: 2

      Exactly, and better get a .biz, .info, .someothertldthatwillmakeusmoremoney while they're at it...

      When I got an email offering us a .ninja tld for our business domains I died a little bit inside...

      --
      Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
    2. Re:In other words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's much worse than that because a) nobody wanted a .uk TLD in the first place and b) they're about 4 times the price of a .co.uk domain FOR NO GOOD REASON (other than a cash grab, obviously).

    3. Re:In other words by Krymzn · · Score: 2

      They're "obliged", not "obligated". Much obligated for the opportunity to point this out.

    4. Re:In other words by Zaiff+Urgulbunger · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yeah, looks like a lot of registrars are price gouging - according to Nominet, the wholesale price is the same. And definitely don't ever use 123Reg because they'll even charge you to switch. Fuckers!

      The only registrar I've found thus-far with the same price for .co.uk and .uk is Mythic Beasts although they're a bit pricey unless you're registering for 10 years.

      Gandi.net don't appear to have .uk pricing yet unless I'm missing something!

  2. Moneygrabbing Nominet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    As a Nominet member I voted against this (twice now, they were defeated the first time, then ignored everyone). Perhaps someone from Nominet can tell me why somedomain.uk is pre-allocated to whoever has somedomain.co.uk rather than the owner of somedomain.org.uk.

    1. Re:Moneygrabbing Nominet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Yes I completely agree.

      In my case, the .co.uk address is a cyber squatter. Why should he get priority over a genuine domain?

    2. Re:Moneygrabbing Nominet by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not a UK person, but I believe that they're complaining about the fact that, for instance, the person who registered london.co.uk (currently a domain parking page) gets preference for the new london.uk domain over the person who registered london.org.uk (apparently "The London Organization", which appears to be a Visitors/Business organization to promote the city of London.) Or why the (again, domain parking) owner of oxford.co.uk gets preference for obtaining oxford.uk as opposed to the University of Oxford, which has oxford.ac.uk registered.

    3. Re:Moneygrabbing Nominet by ledow · · Score: 2

      Cyber-squatters pay more money for domains than you ever will.

      Hence, Nominet has really just offered a product preferentially to it's prime (if unethical) customers.

      And to think we complain about ICANN not being completely "International"... Nominet doesn't even represent the interests it's supposed to at all...

  3. That reminds me.. by Virtucon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "The new phonebook's here! The new phonebook's here!"
    "Page 73, Johnson, Naven R. I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book every day!"
    "This is the kind of spontaneous publicity, your name in print that makes people!"
    "Things are going to start happening to me now."

    - The Jerk

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  4. Re:What about Ukraine? by ledow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    However, technically, the UK's identifier for everything else is actually "gb", hence we should have the ".gb" instead of ".uk".

    But, first-come, first-served which is pretty much the mantra of anything to do with grabbing domain names despite the complete irrelevance of having a "particular" domain to modern computing.

  5. Re:What about Ukraine? by Alioth · · Score: 2

    .gb would be less accurate than .uk - Northern Ireland is part of the UK but not part of Great Britain.

    --
    Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
  6. Re:What about Ukraine? by pablo.cl · · Score: 3, Interesting

    There should be nor arguing about CCTLDs. All CCTLDs, (except for .uk, which is an oddity) are in ISO 3166-1. The standard may be right or wrong, accurate or vague, fair or unfair, but it's a standard.

    .gb would be standard.

  7. Re:What about Ukraine? by 91degrees · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The official ISO 3166-1 2 letter code for the UK is GB though - Short for "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland".

    "United" and "kingdom" aren't usually considered part of a country's name according to the ISO. Although it does seem a little odd that no exception was made in this case, since the United Staes of America is US.

  8. This is all wrong by Grishnakh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What we should be doing is eliminating top-level names like .com, .org, .net, and especially .mil, because these are all American-biased. Instead, every country should get its own two-letter domain (.uk, .us, etc.), and inside each of those there should be .co, .org, .mil, .gov, etc. So Twinings Tea from London would have the site "twinings.co.uk", and that's it. Apple Computer would be "apple.co.us". Multinational corporations would get sites in the country where the corporate HQ is located. No multiple domains for the same company; companies only need a commercial address, not a .net or a .org since they aren't non-commercial entities. The Apache Foundation would get "apache.org.us", the US Navy would get "navy.mil.us", the Royal (British) Navy would get "navy.mil.uk", etc.

    What they've done now is just a total mess.

    1. Re:This is all wrong by Grishnakh · · Score: 2

      Yes, there is a .us, but no one uses it. Even US governmental entities don't use .us or .gov most of the time; lots of town governments and other entities have .com or .org domains for some dumb reason. In Arizona for instance, the DMV (they call it MVD) website is "servicearizona.com". WTF? It should be something like mvd.az.gov.us. But I guess they think that's too hard for idiots to remember. In this age of Google (and other search engines), websites don't need to be that easy to remember; if you don't remember your state's motor vehicle department website, it's easy to google it.

      As for multinational stuff, I don't think that should be allowed. There's already too much debate over which country's laws should apply to a given website; for instance, should ebay.com be allowed to list historic Nazi paraphernalia? In the US, yes; in Germany, no. Whose laws apply? Well if Ebay had their US site at ebay.co.us, and maybe a sister site at ebay.co.de, the answer would be easy: their US site would follow US laws, and their German site would follow German laws. It's probably like that already anyway, but having each site explicitly show which nation it's registered in by having it as part of the name would simplify matters immensely. US authorities would have control over everything in the .us domain, and Germany would have control over everything in the .de domain, and neither would have any control over sites on the other domains. Also, domain squatting would be pretty hard because it wouldn't be trans-national: if someone sues in German court over some domain that's registered to someone else, the German court would be able to exercise authority over it if it's a .de domain. If it's a .us domain, then that company would have to file suit in a US court.

    2. Re:This is all wrong by Kjella · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So Twinings Tea from London would have the site "twinings.co.uk", and that's it.

      And who'd go around remembering that Twinings is British, Sony is Japanese, Audi is German and so on? If it's sold here, I expect a localized version of their website in my country's domain (even if it's just a redirect to $brand.com/countrycode, as so many do), the country of origin is only marginally interesting. It makes guessing the correct domain harder without the use of Google, not easier.

      No multiple domains for the same company

      Let's forbid anyone doing anything about domain squatting. And won't this be massive fun during mergers, acquisitions and spinoffs.

      companies only need a commercial address, not a .net or a .org since they aren't non-commercial entities.

      The world and their dog already has a dotcom no matter what, you're trying to clean a pool that has more piss than water in it.

      Stop the madness, just accept globalization as a fact and move the whole .com to become root domains at reasonable prices and that's that. Google is just "google", Twinings Tea is just "twinings" and let Apple the computer company and Apple the music company and Apple the produce company fight over who's "apple", absolutely nobody wants their domain name to be some kind of unique categorization down a tree, it's "google" not "google.searchengine". Reserve the two-letter domains as special cases for nations and let the free market settle the rest. Practically there's no problem, are you Tesla building cars? Get teslamotors.com and the whole thing is solved with 99% less drama.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
  9. Why don't businesses use .ltd.uk and .plc.uk? by greenius · · Score: 2

    With all the spamming and phishing going on, I don't understand why more businesses don't use the *.ltd.uk and *.plc.uk domains which can ONLY be registered by the legal owners of the Limited company or Corporation, preventing people from domain squatting and adding a level of trust similar to https.

    --
    I copied this sig from someone else (but where did they get it from?)
  10. Re:What about Ukraine? by fellip_nectar · · Score: 4, Informative

    The UK was initially assigned .gb and it's still reserved for us. But we got to use .uk too, as it made the transition from JANET NRS to DNS easier for our pre-existing academic network.

    --
    Worst. Signature. Ever.
  11. Re:Another chance... by dogsbreath · · Score: 4, Funny

    popeye.uk.uk.uk.uk.uk.uk

  12. Re:Another chance... by Wootery · · Score: 2

    I'm surprised there aren't more people who realise than ICANN is, to use the technical term, fucking broken.

    This flood of new TLDs it not good for the web. It does mean companies and organisation are basically required to register a whole bunch of domains, though, lest unsavoury types get their hands on one of the domains. And that means a whole lot more money for ICANN.

    An alternate DNS root would be a 'solution', but breaking the web into two webs would be a pretty awful way to progress things.

    Gah.