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Nominet “gaslighting” members over fees, candidate claims

Kevin Murphy, October 4, 2022, 15:58:29 (UTC), Domain Registries

Nominet has been accused of “gaslighting” its members over the issue of whether its membership fees are lawful by one of its non-executive director candidates.

Jim Davies is one of four signatories of the latest missive from the WeightedVoting.uk campaign, which is trying to get Nominet to address both its voting system and the fees it charges members.

Following the news last week that lawyer Ian Mitchell KC, hired by the campaign, had concluded that Nominet’s Articles haven’t technically allowed it to charge membership fees for the last 25 years, the registry issued a statement saying its own legal advice disagreed.

“That advice identifies significant flaws in the [Mitchell] advice that has been published. We remain confident in the legality of Nominet’s long-standing voting and membership arrangements,” Nominet told us last week, while declining to provide that advice.

It seems the same statement was provided to Nominet members, though only WeightedVoting was provided the new opinion.

Now WeightedVoting has published Nominet’s opinion, written by Andrew Thornton KC, which concludes that the weighted voting system Nominet uses — in which bigger registrars get more votes — is “entirely lawful and enforceable”.

What Thornton’s opinion does not address is the membership fees problem, despite Nominet’s suggestion that it covers both issues.

Now Davies and his supporters have written to Nominet’s current non-executive directors, asking again for the company’s annual general meeting, still apparently due to go ahead on Thursday, to be delayed.

They call Nominet’s statement “manifestly false” and call for the NEDs to exercise their legal duties or face “personal liability”.

Davies is one of three candidates to fill a vacating NED seat at the AGM this week when the results of a recently concluded election are announced.

His rivals are former reporter Kieren McCarthy and CentralNic lawyer Volker Greimann.

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