Recent Posts
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Now South Africa looks to second-level domain sales
Kevin Murphy,
March 13, 2018, 11:35:30 (UTC),
Domain Registries
South Africa looks to be the next country to start letting people register domains directly at the second level of its ccTLD.
Local registry authority ZADNA this week opened a policy consultation on allowing registrants access to direct, second-level .za names.
Currently, if you want a .za you have to register at the third level under the likes of .co.za or .net.za.
But ZADNA says second-level names will help it continue to compete in a market now populated by hundreds of new gTLDs.
The company said it has been “inundated” by calls for such a move.
The policy shift would see South Africa follow the the path beaten in recent years by UK, New Zealand, Kenya and (probably) Australia, which have all changed policy to allow second-level names.
But these things are never without controversy.
Domain investors are typically resistant to such moves, fearing dilution and the possible devaluing of their portfolios.
There are often also intellectual property concerns, and concerns about priority “grandfathering” rights when matching .co.za and .org.za names, for example, have different owners.
ZADNA is floating the possibility of auctions to resolve these kinds of conflicts.
The proposal (pdf) is open for comment until April 16.
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I thought Nominet handle the “grandfathering” issue pretty responsibly – so probably a good model to start from.
.uk has been a complete disaster, . UK’s are now being given away and roboregistered into people’s accounts.
Is that true? News to me. Sources?
Source here.
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/09/14/123reg_customers_outraged_at_automatic_uk_domain_registration/
Around 1.5 million .uk’s have now been put into people’s accounts in this way. 75% of all .uk are robo reges.
See here, (note the massive volumes in .uk for Aug, Sept and Oct)
https://www.nominet.uk/news/reports-statistics/uk-register-statistics-2017/
Ah, sorry, I thought you were referring to registry-level robo-regs.
Nominet has been on the record as saying they support it.
Response from Nominet (James Middleditch Customer Resolution Team)
(see page page 6 of thread below)
https://www.acorndomains.co.uk/threads/123reg-taking-liberties-with-your-uk-domain-registration-rights.150252/
“There is nothing in that RA [registrant agreement] which prohibits this activity. It could be argued that by pro-actively protecting their existing customers by exercising these rights on behalf of the customer, they are actually adhering to the fundamental tenet of the RA which is to act in the best interest of .uk domain name registrants. The RA also says that registrars can act on behalf of their customers, which is in essence what this promotion involves.
“The company said it has been “inundated” by calls for such a move.”
LOL Were the calls from registrars?
This should be interesting. Does .za have enough top-level registrations to justify second levels?
There are over 1 million .ZA domains. 🙂