European Commission Says It Will Cancel All 300,000 UK-Owned .EU Domains (theregister.co.uk)

Brexit has hit the internet, and not in a good way. From a report: In an official statement Thursday, the European Commission announced it will cancel all 300,000 domains under the .eu top-level domain that have a UK registrant, following Britain's eventual departure from the European Union. "As of the withdrawal date, undertakings and organizations that are established in the United Kingdom but not in the EU and natural persons who reside in the United Kingdom will no longer be eligible to register .eu domain names," the document states, adding, "or if they are .eu registrants, to renew .eu domain names registered before the withdrawal date." Going even further, the EC suggested that existing .eu domains might be cancelled the moment Brexit happens -- expected to be 366 days from now -- with no right of appeal.

Comments

Petty.

[MachineShedFred]

Is it just me, or does this seem fairly petty and petulant? Yeah, sure, the UK won't be in the Eurozone any more, but all you're doing is (in the best case) generating revenue by making all those domain owners re-register with addresses in continental Europe, and inviting a land rush for speculators and scammers in the worst case.

Seems pretty stupid.

Re:Petty.

[Joce640k]

Rules is rules.

They voted to leave, they've got nothing coming.

Re:Who voted to what?

[AmiMoJo]

The EU TLD is for sites based in the EU. The idea is to give EU citizens confidence that it is an EU site operating under EU rules on things like privacy.

Since the point of brexit is supposed to be ditching those rules and leaving the EU, it makes no sense to allow UK entities to have EU domains.

If the UK wants to negotiate access and agrees to abide by the rules, fine. But the UK doesn't want that. Agreeing to the rules is one of the government's red lines, although so far they have not meant much.