Nominet UK
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nominet UK is the .uk domain name registry in the United Kingdom, which was founded by Dr. Willie Black 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. Nominet is a non-profit company limited by guarantee. It has members who act as shareholders. Anyone can become a member, but most members are internet service providers who are also registrars.
Unlike the model in other countries, by and large customers wishing to register a domain do not approach Nominet directly, but register the domain via a 'registrar'. This is an organisation registered with Nominet to register and update domains on behalf of customers, and who have provided a PGP public key to enable Nominet to authenticate communciations from them. Registrars were formerly known as "tagholders".
As of January 2007 the .uk register held 5,522,104 .uk domain names (with an annual growth rate of 18.14%) making it the fourth largest Top Level Domain in the world. Nominet also deals with disputes about registrations of .uk domain names, via its Dispute Resolution Service (DRS), which is similar to the UDRP system used for generic Top Level Domain Names, but with certain innovations such as a free mediation service.
Nominet, which operates the .uk domain and is soon to start operating the UK ENUM registry, is planning to launch a charitable Foundation. Nominet has been running up a surplus (profit) on its ordinary operations since 2003; since its constitution forbids it from distributing surplus funds to members in the manner of a commercial company paying dividends, it is now looking at charitable activities as a means of running down the money mountain.
As from December 2007, Nominet’s Board proposes settling £5m in the first year on its charitable offshoot, which will support “education, research and the funding of suitable projects for the benefit of UK Internet stakeholders”.
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[edit] History
Most countries have their own Top Level Domain. The .uk TLD was first used in 1985,[1] and at that time a voluntary group called the 'Naming Committee' managed the registration of .uk domain names. By the early 1990s, Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who registered domains for their customers were joined by a new breed of domain name specialists, led by NetNames, 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), 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. It also became clear that the existing ruleset was not sustainable and the Naming Committee was going to break down under pressure of registrations.
[edit] Birth of Nominet
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 1993 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 later that year.
The options to set-up as a profit-making company or a charity were rejected, and Nominet was established in 1996 as a private, not-for-profit membership company, limited by guarantee. Although formed with a board invited by Willie Black, who became the first CEO of the new company, 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.
[edit] Registration issues
[edit] Pre-Nominet domain names
Moving domains to the newly formed company registrants of existing domains were invited to agree to Nominet's new terms and conditions. There were several complaints from pre nominet domain owners objecting to the need to start paying for something that was previously free.[citation needed]
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[citation needed]. 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[citation needed].
[edit] Legal issues
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[citation needed].
[edit] Second-level domains managed by Nominet
[edit] Second-level domains managed by other organisations
[edit] See also
- .uk domain name
- UDRP
- InterNIC - The United States counterpart.
- Apple Computer trademark dispute with Benjamin Cohen - Details of Nominet's ruling for Apple Computer in the dispute of the itunes.co.uk domain.
