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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 "These .EU domain names will then be withdrawn and will become inoperable," states the guidance issued by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, which confirms warnings issued this year by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.

7 of 212 comments (clear)

  1. Re:If so, small price to pay for freedom by CaptainDork · · Score: 4, Informative

    TFS and TFA do not present this as the best argument for overturning the referendum. It's presented as a consequence and a notice.

    Also, this is one in a long list of consequences of Leave.

    You are being deliberately deceptive and divisive.

    Please Leave.

    --
    It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
  2. Re:I wouldn't worry much by AmiMoJo · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Even the official Vote Leave campaign wasn't dumb enough to try to leave the way Teresa May has. Their leaflet said that they would negotiate the withdrawal before triggering Article 50.

    May's red lines fucked the UK. The EU's single market is nearly over 6x larger than the UK market, so clearly they were never going to do anything to damage it just for the sake of Britain. Her only plan seems to have been to negotiate a deal that she can claim delivers some perverse form of brexit, and then run down the clock until everyone panics and accepts it.

    Fortunately Parliament is fighting hard to stop her, but all the while it's damaging the UK. Even if it cancels right now, a lot of harm has already been done.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  3. Re:More scare tactics by AmiMoJo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Reminds me of all the outrage over how the EU is steering the Article 50 process. We fucking wrote it, we decided that would be how it works.

    --
    const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
    SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
  4. Re:I wouldn't worry much by Hognoxious · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Hard brexit" just means "no deal brexit" which is what the UK citizenry voted for in the referendum.

    No they didn't. They were told they could eat their cake and have it - get the benefits of membership without the costs and the obligations.

    I lost count of how many times I heard "The Germans will still want to sell their cars, the French will still want to sell their wine" and shit like that.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  5. Re:I wouldn't worry much by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    For all that I know, phoning Brussels a few minutes before midnight last day with an "Oh, it all was a joke!" won't serve any purpose either.

    You don't know much, then. It's a matter of record that Article 50 may be revoked unilaterally.

    https://www.google.com/search?...

    Isn't there a Trump rally you could be at?

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  6. Re:I wouldn't worry much by edwdig · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. Re:I wouldn't worry much by Aighearach · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The idiots simply asserted that they could negotiate some sort of sweatheart deal with the EU, when actually the EU needs to withhold any sort of special privileges at all, or else they'd see a whole raft of countries also wanting half-way-out.

    That was never something Brussels would agree to. And yet, it is what was presented to the British people to vote on. Absurd.

    This is the value of a written Constitution that is difficult to change; you don't have some 51% vote that changes the very legal basic of the country.

    "Barnier's Staircase" was the obvious reality even before the Brexit vote; these are well-established diplomatic concepts in the EU already when dealing with potential new members.

    It is all a giant sack of lies and false promises, and it always was. If you don't want a "hard" exit, then you can't reasonably exit; a soft exit has to be on the EU's terms, because they have to protect themselves from a mass-exit. The EU has to offer "soft" exit deals that protect themselves at the expense of the country leaving, otherwise they have to hold their ground and say, "Don't leave unless you mean it."

    Here in the US, a State would have to win a war with the rest of the country to leave. In most cases, unless they were given an option historically. Hawaii and Texas, for example, entered on special terms. But anybody else, no, they can't just vote locally to leave, because it affects everybody in the country. Agreeing to not have totally open borders between different political areas is a really big step, it is like a national marriage; you're not supposed to divorce on a whim, and you have to expect it will be painful and expensive for everybody.