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Will A No-Deal Brexit Void 340,000 British-Owned .EU Domains? (theguardian.com)
The Guardian reports on what may happen next to British businesses and individuals who own .EU domains:
There are about 340,000 registered British holders of these web addresses, and the government has urged them to make contingency plans as their web addresses will disappear if the UK does not agree on a deal with Brussels. The domains were introduced in 2006 as a rival to the likes of .com and .org but are available only to individuals or businesses based in the EU or the European Economic Area (EEA)...
Updated government guidance confirms that if the UK leaves without a deal at the end of March then domain owners based in the UK will have two months leeway to move their principal location to somewhere within the EU or EEA. "These .EU domain names will then be withdrawn and will become inoperable," states the guidance issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which confirms warnings issued this year by the EU's domain registrar. "This means you may not be able to access your .EU websites or email from 30 May 2019."
After a year, all the British-registered .EU domains will be made available for purchase by individuals and companies who continue to reside in the EU. This raises the possibility that on the anniversary of a no-deal Brexit, one lucky German or Spaniard could be able to mark the occasion by taking over the Leave.EU domain and using it for their own purposes.
Updated government guidance confirms that if the UK leaves without a deal at the end of March then domain owners based in the UK will have two months leeway to move their principal location to somewhere within the EU or EEA. "These .EU domain names will then be withdrawn and will become inoperable," states the guidance issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which confirms warnings issued this year by the EU's domain registrar. "This means you may not be able to access your .EU websites or email from 30 May 2019."
After a year, all the British-registered .EU domains will be made available for purchase by individuals and companies who continue to reside in the EU. This raises the possibility that on the anniversary of a no-deal Brexit, one lucky German or Spaniard could be able to mark the occasion by taking over the Leave.EU domain and using it for their own purposes.
The EU wasn't going to negotiate at all until Article 50 was triggered.
From a US viewpoint, it sounds like the Leave campaign expected to be able to retain all the benefits of being in the EU, while only giving up the parts of membership that they didn't like. And they expected the EU to negotiate on their terms, and give them everything they wanted. And then after the referendum, they found out that's not how the real world works.
I've often felt that the Leave campaign never had any intention of succeeding. Their goals seemed so unrealistic that I assumed their intention was just to create conflict in politics. When they did win the vote, no one really knew how to proceed from there, so they mostly just choose a path of maximum conflict to avoid having to make the hard decisions.