Nominet UK

Nominet UK is the overall registry for the .uk domain name. Nominet directly manages registrations directly under .uk, including second level domains .co.uk .org.uk .me.uk and .ltd.uk. Nominet also manages the .wales and .cymru domains.[1]

Nominet UK
FormationApril 11, 1996 (1996-04-11)
TypeNonprofit
Legal statusCompany Limited by Guarantee
Location
  • Oxford, United Kingdom
Region served
United Kingdom
ServicesccTLD Registry, Cyber Security
Membership (2020/21)
2500
Chairman
Mark Wood
CEO
Russell Haworth
Executive Director
Eleanor Bradley
Executive Director
Ben Hill
SubsidiariesNominet US Inc.
Websitewww.nominet.uk


As of 15th September 2020, the .uk register held 10,829,109 .uk domain names.[2] This represents a downward trend, but Nominet remains fourth largest ccTLD. [3] Unlike many other ccTLD Nominet has no restrictions on who can register its domain names.

Nominet was founded by Dr Willie Black and five others on 14 May 1996 when its predecessor, the "Naming Committee" was unable to deal with the volume of registrations then being sought under the .uk domain.[4] Nominet is not-for-profit company limited by guarantee. It has members who act as shareholders, but without the right to participate in the profits of the company. Anyone can become a member, but most members are internet service providers who are also registrars.

Customers wishing to register a domain can approach Nominet directly but will generally register the domain via a domain registrar – a business entity authorised by Nominet to register and manage .uk domains on behalf of customers. Registrars for .uk domains were formerly known as "tagholders".

Nominet also deals with disputes about registrations of .uk domain names, via its Dispute Resolution Service (DRS)[5] which is similar to the UDRP system used for generic Top Level Domain Names, but with certain innovations such as a free mediation service.

In 2008 Nominet launched a charitable foundation and contributed some of its public-benefit profits to [6] the Nominet Trust. In May 2018 Nominet ceased to have control over the organisation[7] and focused on its own charitable initiative. By 2020 the now renamed Social Tech Trust's income had fallen to £99,000 from £5.6 million in 2018.[8]

Nominet's charitable giving fell by 65% between 2016 and 2020 to £1.7 million, in the same period the CEO's pay increase 45% to £593,000 [9].[10]

In February 2021 over 140 members requested a general meeting to replace the current directors with Sir Michael Lyons, former Chairman of the BBC and Axel Pawlik former Managing Director of RIPE.[11]

History
Further information: .uk § History

Most countries have their own Top Level Domain. The .uk TLD was first used in 1985,[12] and at that time a voluntary group called the "Naming Committee" managed the registration of .uk domain names. This consisted of members of LINX as full members (the main ISPs in the UK), and their resellers as guest members. By the mid 1990s, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who registered domains for their customers were joined by a new breed of domain name specialists who had an entrepreneurial attitude to domain names. The Naming Committee operated a ruleset that forced all name registrations to 'exactly' match the name of the registering company and also limited all companies to a single domain name. Although such rules were not exceptional for the time (Network Solutions operated a similar policy in the United States), the growth of a commercial internet soon brought these restrictions into close focus. As demand for domain name registrations grew, it became clear that a voluntary group could no longer cope with the volume of registrations being requested.[13] It also became clear that the existing ruleset was not sustainable and the Naming Committee was going to break down under pressure of registrations.

Forming of Nominet UK

When it became clear that a new organisation with a new approach was needed to manage the .uk TLD. The Naming Committee mailing list had mutated into a discussion group for domain name issues and many discussions about what type of corporation the Registry should be were held. Meanwhile, at UKERNA, Dr Willie Black and John Carey, were watching the situation and in 1996 John Carey wrote a proposed plan for a new organisation to be called Nominet. This was distributed widely, and the first Nominet meeting was held at a hotel at Heathrow Airport on 11 April 1996.

The options to set up as a profit-making company or a charity were rejected, and Nominet was established on 14 May 1996 as a private, not-for-profit membership company, limited by guarantee.[14] Whilst the move was generally popular, there was strong resistance from some parts of the industry.[15] Although formed with a board composed of Willie Black (who became the first CEO of the new company), John Carey and the four co-founders drawn from the internet industry,[16] elections were held by the new membership which resulted in the first elected board members to oversee the growth of the UK domain name industry.

Pre-Nominet domain names

From Nominet inception in on 1st July 1996, until 2002 domains registered pre Nominet were provided free of charge.[17] In 2002 as had been hinted at its inception in 1996,[18] Nominet began a process over 2 years of migrating those domains on to Nominet standard terms and conditions and implementing charging.[19]

Those domains can be identified within the whois results as having a registration date of "before - August 1996".[20]

There were several complaints from pre-Nominet domain owners objecting to the need to start paying for something that Nominet had not charge for in the preceding 6 years.

Many pre-Nominet domain names had little or no contact information, as a result it has been hard to work out ownership of the domain names. Nominet are running an internal project (the PreNom project) to clear out the remaining pre Nominet domain names so by the end all domain names would be under the new Nominet terms and conditions.

Nominet soon realised it had to work hard to protect both the information it held and the legal position of intellectual property and brand owners.

Controversy

Structural issues

Nominet's success brought with it a number of structural concerns. Over time, it built considerable cash reserves. In 1999, candidates stood for the board on platform similar to 'carpet bagging' attempts with mutual building societies;[21] whilst this was roundly defeated,[22] following a financial report from Alex Bligh a potential conflict between turning a profit to maintaining sufficient financial reserves and its goal of maintaining long term profit and loss neutrality.[23]

Silencing of Critics

Speaking at Nominet’s 2020 annual general meeting (AGM), the organisation’s CEO Russell Haworth shocked members by announcing he was shutting down its internal web forum – the only means of independent communication between members – effective immediately.[24][25]

Voting Irregularities

Nominet was forced to admit it wrongly calculated election results for its board of directors in 2018 and 2019.[26]

.uk Domain reservation problems

In 2019 customers of 123-Reg and NamesCo were invoiced for domain names that were reserved for free by Nominet.[27]

Eagle-eyed dot-UK registry watchers noticed unexpected changes in ownership of various .uk names, including sunset.uk, waterfall.uk, pad.uk and trending.uk: all of which were sold by Fasthosts to one or more industry insiders in advance of the domains being released by Nominet rather than going through the proper public process.[28][29]

Rights of Registration

Nominet introduction of .UK to compete with .co.uk and .org.uk has resulted in increased cost to UK brand owners and caused much confusion amongst registrants.[30][31]

Expiring Domains Consultation

In July 2020 Nominet announced a new policy consultation for expiring .UK domain names[32] but it has been mired with controversy as it seems not to be in the public's benefit.[33][34][35][36]

Staff Pay

Nominet has consistently increased the salaries of its employees, especially directors. Average salaries have increased from £28,542 in 2002 to £60,276 in 2014. In the same period the highest paid director went from £125,000 to £308,000. [37]

Oversight and Consultation

In recent years, Nominet have repeatedly altered their constitution to avoid scrutiny, reduce oversight and dispense with consultations. Making it easier for them to increase prices and change their rules to increase their revenues.

Move to remove directors

On 2rd February 2021, over 140 members wrote to the board of directors via Rory Kelly the company secretary calling for a general meeting to propose two ordinary resolutions[38] -

1. Remove Eleanor Bradley, Russell Haworth, Ben Hill, Jane Tozer and Mark Wood as directors before

expiration of their respective periods of office and despite anything in any agreement between them

and Nominet UK; and

2. Appoint Sir Michael Lyons and Axel Pawlik as directors [39][40]

Non-core Activities

Nominet also delivers the National Cyber Security Centre’s Protective Domain Name Service (PDNS)[41] since 2016, protecting the UK public sector’s internet traffic.

A £4 Million investment into registry services was announced in February 2020 [42] alongside the acquisition of US-based cyber security company, CyGlass.[43]

Registry

Top-level domains

Nominet manages the registry of the following top-level domains:

  • .uk – top-level domain for the United Kingdom
  • .cymru – top-level domain for Wales
  • .wales – top-level domain for Wales

Second-level domains managed by Nominet

Nominet manages the following second-level domains:

  • .co.uk – unrestricted, intended for businesses
  • .org.uk – unrestricted, intended for non-profit organisations
  • .net.uk – reserved exclusively for UK internet service providers
  • .ltd.uk – reserved exclusively for UK limited liability companies; subdomain must correspond to the company's registered name
  • .plc.uk – reserved exclusively for UK public limited companies; subdomain must correspond to the company's registered name
  • .sch.uk – reserved exclusively for primary and secondary schools
  • .me.uk – unrestricted, intended for personal use

Second-level domains managed by other organisations
  • .mod.uk – operated by the Ministry of Defence
  • .mil.uk – operated by the Ministry of Defence

Quasi second-level domains

The following are widely used as second-level domains but are registered with Nominet as top-level domains:

  • .gov.uk was used as a second-level domain for UK government agencies until 2012 when gov.uk started functioning as a Nominet-registered independent domain.
  • .ac.uk is commonly used as a second-level domain for UK education and research establishments but ac.uk is actually a Nominet-registered domain held by JANET.

See also

References
  1. "Additional Domains". Nominet. Retrieved 2020-10-31.
  2. ".UK Register Statistics - 2020". Nominet. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
  3. "Nominet Operational Statistics June 2020" (PDF).
  4. Mansell, Robin; Mansell, Dixons Chair in New Media and the Internet Interdepartmental Programme in Media and Communications Robin (2002). Inside the Communication Revolution: Evolving Patterns of Social and Technical Interaction. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-829656-0.
  5. "Introduction to .uk domain disputes". Retrieved 24 January 2013.
  6. "We are pleased to announce the creation of the Nominet Foundation". Retrieved 2009-07-15.
  7. "Cessation of Nominet Uk as a person with significant control on 9 May 2018". Retrieved 5/Feb/2021. Check date values in: |access-date= (help)
  8. "SOCIAL TECH TRUST - Filing history (free information from Companies House)". find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. Retrieved 2021-02-05.
  9. "NOMINET UK - Filing history (free information from Companies House)". find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk. Retrieved 2021-02-05.
  10. ".UK overseer Nominet abandons its own charitable foundation – and why this matters". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
  11. Francisco, Kieren McCarthy in San. "Nominet faces showdown with British internet industry: Extraordinary vote called to oust CEO, board members". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2021-02-03.
  12. Peter K. Yu, The Neverending ccTLD Story
  13. "Nominet UK". Nominet. Archived from the original on 1999-05-03. Retrieved 22 December 2015.
  14. "Nominet history (from archive.org)". Archived from the original on 2002-06-02. Retrieved 2009-07-15.
  15. "UK Web site owners to be charged for co.uk address, Network News". Archived from the original on 1999-11-14.
  16. "Nominet original memorandum of association" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2008-07-06.
  17. "Nominet UK - Pre-Nominet Domain Names". web.archive.org. 2002-06-28. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  18. "NOMINET UK". web.archive.org. 1997-06-24. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  19. "Nominet UK - Pre-Nominet Domain Names". web.archive.org. 2002-06-28. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  20. "Nominet UK - Pre-Nominet Domain Names". web.archive.org. 2002-06-28. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  21. Mullins, Andrew (1999-07-05). "Nominet set to demutualise". The Independent. London. Retrieved 2010-05-20.
  22. "A Report on the 1999 Annual General Meeting". web.archive.org. 2000-02-26. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  23. "A Report on the 1999 Annual General Meeting". web.archive.org. 2000-02-26. Retrieved 2021-02-04.
  24. ".uk registry operator Nominet responds to renewed criticism – by silencing its critics". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  25. Kevin Murphy (23 September 2020). "Nominet shuts down "hostile" discussion forum". domainincite.com. TLD Research Ltd. Archived from the original on 29 September 2020. Retrieved 1 February 2021.
  26. ".UK overlord Nominet tells everyone not to worry about 'distorted' vote allocations in its board elections". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  27. Francisco, Kieren McCarthy in San. "What the hell is going on with .uk? Dozens of domain names sold in error, then reversed, but we'll say no more about it, says oversight org". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
  28. September 2020, Joel Khalili 18. "Something strange is going on with .uk domains". TechRadar. Retrieved 2021-02-06.
  29. "What the hell is going on with .uk? Dozens of domain names sold in error, then reversed, but we'll say no more about it, says oversight org". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  30. "Whose side you on, Nominet? Registry floods .co.uk owners with begging emails to renew unwanted .uk domains". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  31. "Fasthosts finally promises to stop pushing unwanted .uk domains onto irritated customers". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  32. "Nominet announces new policy consultation for expiring .UK domains". Nominet. 2020-07-16. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
  33. "Fasthosts finally promises to stop pushing unwanted .uk domains onto irritated customers". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  34. "Nominet backtracks on .uk domain expiration money grab, critics still fear sweetheart deal to come". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  35. "Nominet promises .uk owners it'll listen to feedback on plan to award itself millions... as long as it agrees with it". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  36. "Nominet shakes up system for expiring .uk domains, just happens to choose one that will make it £millions. Again". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2020-09-23.
  37. https://www.theregister.com/2015/11/25/nominet_raises_price_uk_domains/
  38. Francisco, Kieren McCarthy in San. "Nominet faces showdown with British internet industry: Extraordinary vote called to oust CEO, board members". www.theregister.com. Retrieved 2021-02-03.
  39. Williams, Christopher (2021-01-30). "Former BBC chairman joins bid to oust board at web registry". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2021-02-03.
  40. Blackler, Simon (2 February 2021). "Notice to call a general meeting of the membership of Nominet UK" (PDF). Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  41. "Protective DNS (PDNS)". www.ncsc.gov.uk. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
  42. "Nominet announces strategic investments in registry and cyber". Nominet. 2020-02-20. Retrieved 2020-08-17.
  43. "CyGlass - Network Defense as a Service". CyGlass. Retrieved 2020-09-17.
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