One-year .co.uk domains will be more expensive

Single-year .co.uk domain name registrations will cost more per year than multi-year registrations, under plans outlined by .uk registry Nominet today.

The registry announced back in November that it intended to loosen up its registration policies to bring them into line with other top-level domains.

From May 1, a one-year .uk domain will have a registry fee of £3.50 ($5.44). The price of a multi-year registration will stay the same as current two-year pricing, at £2.50 (£3.88) per year.

Previously, registrants acquired .uk domains in two-year blocks.

Under the new policy regime, registrations can be for as little as a year or for as many as 10 years. Renewals can be for multiple years, albeit capped at 10 overall.

There was a worry that the changes could lead to more people buying throwaway, abusive or speculative .uk domains. A higher fee could go a little way to offset that.

London issues .london RFP through Olympic bid system

London & Partners, the official promotional agency for London, has released a request for proposals for a registry to apply for and run .london as a new top-level domain.

Bidders will have to sign up for CompeteFor, an online procurement tool designed primarily for the London 2012 Olympics, in order to submit their proposals.

UK-based registries Nominet and CentralNic have already said they plan to respond to the RFP, but L&P says that it is open to companies anywhere, not only in the UK and EU.

The RFP is open until January 5 at noon GMT.

Nominet approves .judiciary.uk

Nominet has approved a request to clutter up the second level under .uk with another government-oriented domain, .judiciary.uk, bringing the total number of SLDs to 15.

As you may know, the UK equivalent of .com is .co.uk, but there are other suffixes such as .org.uk, .me.uk, .plc.uk, .ltd.uk and .net.uk, each with varying restrictions.

There are also several SLDs reserved for public sector use: .gov.uk, .police.uk, .nhs.uk (National Health Service), .sch.uk (schools), .ac.uk (universities) .mod.uk (Ministry of Defence) and .parliament.uk.

The new .judiciary.uk will of course be closed, restricted to the institutions of the UK judiciary. Nominet is proposing to migrate affected registrants from their existing .gov.uk domains.

“Creating judiciary.uk will ensure that the domain name reflects the judiciary’s independence from government, as enshrined in the Constitutional Reform Act, 2005,” Nominet said.

The request was made by the Judicial Office and the Cabinet Office and “due to the unique nature of the request” did not follow the usual Nominet policy for SLD creation.

Another 2,000 .uk fraud domains taken down

Nominet has suspended over 2,000 .uk domain names allegedly being used to sell counterfeit goods on the instruction of the Metropolitan Police.

The Met said in a statement today that the crackdown was designed to protect online shoppers in the run-up to Christmas. It did something similar last year and the year before.

The sites were allegedly selling bootleg products purportedly from brands such as Ugg, Nike and Tiffany.

Nominet said that it worked with is registrars to coordinate the suspensions, and that the registrants were all informed before their domains were taken down.

All the registrants were in breach of terms and conditions, it said.

A Nominet working group is currently in the final stages of creating a policy that will streamline the process of law enforcement domain suspensions, as I reported for The Register today.

Over 7,500 .uk cybersquatting cases heard

Nominet is celebrating the 10-year anniversary of its Dispute Resolution Service this week, saying that it has settled over 7,500 cybersquatting cases.

Based on a £15,000 estimated cost of legal action, the .uk registry reckons DRS has saved companies about £110 million ($176 million) over the last decade.

DRS has similarities but differences to UDRP. Notably, DRS has a formal mediation phase and an appeals process for registrants who believe their domains were wrongly taken from them.

The .uk zone currently has fewer than 10 million registrations, compared to the 135 million gTLD domains to which the UDRP applies.

WIPO and the National Arbitration Forum have settled about 35,000 UDRP complaints over the last decade. With that in mind, cybersquatting enforcement in .uk appears to have been relatively heavy.