Cowley, one foot out of the industry, joins Architelos

Former Nominet CEO Lesley Cowley has become a consultant for Architelos, as part of a raft of domain and non-domain industry positions she’s taken on.
Primarily, Cowley has become chair of the UK’s Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency — a public-sector role with a vague conceptual relationship with domain names (ie, managing lots of unique identifiers).
At Architelos, a provider of registry management software and services, she will be a “executive coach and consultant”, Cowley wrote in a blog post.
She will also remain a volunteer with ICANN, where she’s the former chair and current councilor of the ccNSO.
Cowley has also been named a non-executive director of aql, a data center in Leeds, UK.
She announced her resignation in May, after 12 years as Nominet CEO. Her replacement has not yet been named.

No mention of .london at ICANN London

The forthcoming .london gTLD didn’t get a look in during the opening ceremony of ICANN 50, held this morning in London.
The host city gTLD’s complete absence from the two-hour event — it wasn’t mentioned once — would have escaped notice had it not been for the abundance of plugs for .wales and .cymru attendees received instead.
.cymru is the Welsh name for Wales. The gTLDs are to be launched simultaneously.
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones was given stage time to announce, in between anti-English quips, that the Welsh government is to dump .gov.uk in favor of the two new Welsh gTLDs.
Later, a Welsh male voice choir (presumably a famous one) took to the stage to sing a couple of songs and announce that they too are planning to use .wales and .cymru for their web sites.
Nominet chair Rennie Fritchie also plugged the upcoming launches during her five-minute slot.
You’d have been forgiven for wondering if you’d accidentally got off the plane in Cardiff.
Where was .london?
Did Dot London Domains seriously drop the ball here?
Or did .london’s absence have something to do with the fact that the host ccTLD and meeting sponsor, Nominet, is the registry for .wales and .cymru but was beaten to the .london back-end contract by Minds + Machines?

.uk launches with Stephen Fry as anchor tenant

Nominet has launched its controversial .uk service, enabling Brits and others to register directly at the second level for the first time.
It did so with an endorsement from quintessential uber-Brit, gadget nut, Apple slave and national treasure Stephen Fry and a marketing splash including a .uk domain apparently visible from 35,000 feet up.
This sign has been placed in one of the main flight paths into Heathrow. Readers flying in to London for ICANN 50 later this month might want to ask for a window seat.

Actor/author/comedian Fry was the first to be given a .uk today. He’s switched from stephenfry.com to stephenfry.uk as a result — the .com is already redirecting to the .uk.
He said in a blog post:

It’s only three harmless key-presses, you may think. A year or so back I wrote that it seemed to me annoying and lax of the British internet authority (if such a body ever existed, which it didn’t and doesn’t) when domain names were being handed that they were so inattentive and their eyes so off the ball. How come Germany could have .de, France .fr, South Africa .za, Italy .it etc etc etc? And we poor British had to have the extra exhaustion of typing .co.uk. Three whole keystrokes. It doesn’t stack up to much when compared to other howling injustices in the world. The length of time poor students and tourists have to queue to get an Abercrombie and Fitch polo shirt for example, but nonetheless it has been a nuisance these twenty years or so.

His involvement has helped the news hit many of the major daily newspapers in the UK today.
This is how to launch a TLD.
Fry’s friend Prince Charles was given princeofwales.uk last December, among 69 domains previously under .gov.uk that the government requested receive special treatment.
While new .uk addresses are available to register now, you won’t be able to immediately register one that matches a .co.uk unless you’re the owner of that .co.uk.
All .co.uk registrants have been given five years to decide whether they want the .uk equivalent, which carries a £2.50-a-year fee ($4.20), assuming a multi-year registration.
That’s the same as a .co.uk. Assuming .uk gets good uptake and that most registrants will keep their .co.uk names for the foreseeable future, Nominet’s accounts could be in for a significant boost.
Owners of .org.uk or .me.uk names only get the free reservation if the matching .co.uk is not already registered. Otherwise, they have to wait five years like everyone else.

Cowley quits Nominet

Lesley Cowley has unexpectedly quit her job as Nominet’s longstanding CEO.
The .uk registry today announced that she will leave the company July 9, and that the remaining C-suite will manage the company until a replacement is found.
No reason for Cowley’s departure was given, beyond Cowley saying “it is now the right time to move on”.
It’s not known if she has a new gig already lined up. She’s believed to have applied for the ICANN CEO job a couple of times, but that spot isn’t currently vacant.
Cowley has been with Nominet for 15 years and was appointed CEO in 2002.
A small but vocal group of Nominet members has been trying to get her kicked out for the last few years, alleging among other things that she lied to members.
Nominet tells me Cowley’s resignation has nothing to do with that.

Nominet names the date for shorter .uk addresses

Nominet is to start selling .uk domain names at the second level for the first time on June 10 this year.
The controversial Direct.uk service will enable people to register example.uk names, rather than example.co.uk names.
If you already own a .co.uk name, you’ll get five years to register the matching .uk before it is released into the pool of available names.
Nominet has created a new web site to market the sea-change in how .uk names are administered.

Cartier sues Nominet hoping to set global domain name take-down precedent

Luxury watchmaker Cartier has taken .uk registry Nominet to court, hoping to set a precedent that would enable big brands to have domain names taken down at a whim.
The company sued Nominet in a London court in October, seeking an injunction to force the registry to take down 12 domain names that at the time led to sites allegedly selling counterfeit watches.
We’ve only become aware of the case today after Nominet revealed it has filed its defense documents.
Judging by documents attached to Nominet’s court filings, Cartier sees the suit as a test case that could allow it to bring similar suits against other “less cooperative” registries elsewhere in the world.
In a letter submitted as evidence as part of Nominet’s defense, Richard Graham, head of digital IP at Cartier parent company Richemont International, said that he was:

seeking to develop a range of tools that can be deployed quickly and efficiently to prevent Internet users accessing websites that offer counterfeit goods… [and] looking to establish a precedent that can be used to persuade courts in other jurisdictions where the registries are less cooperative.

It’s worth noting that Richemont has applied for 13 dot-brands under ICANN’s new gTLD program and that Graham is often the face of the applications at conferences and such.
Pretty soon Richemont will also be a domain name registry. We seem to be looking at two prongs of its brand protection strategy here.
According to the company’s suit, the 12 domains in question all had bogus Whois information and were all being used to sell bogus Cartier goods.
None of them used a Cartier trademark in the domain — this is explicitly about the contents of web sites, not their domains names — and Cartier says most appeared to be registered to people in China.
Rather than submitting a Whois inaccuracy complaint with Nominet — which could have led to the domains being suspended for a breach of the terms of service — Cartier decided to sue instead.
Graham actually gave Nominet’s lawyers over a week’s notice that the lawsuit was incoming, writing his letter (pdf) on October 22 and filing the complaint (pdf) with the courts November 4.
Cartier seems to have grown frustrated playing whack-a-mole with bootleggers who cannot be traced and just pop up somewhere else whenever their latest web host is persuaded to cut them off.
Graham’s letter, which comes across almost apologetic in its cordiality when compared to the usual legal threat, reads:

Cartier therefore believes the most cost effective and efficient way to disrupt access to the Counterfeiting Websites operating in the UK is to seek relief from you, as the body operating the registry of .uk domain names.

Armed with the foreknowledge provided by the letter, Nominet reviewed the Whois records of the domains in question, found them lacking, and suspended the lot.
Ten were suspended before Cartier sued, according to Nominet. Another expired before the suit was filed and was re-registered by a third party. A fourth, allegedly registered to a German whose scanned identity card was submitted as evidence by Nominet, was suspended earlier this month.
As such, much of Nominet’s defense (pdf) relies upon what seems to be a new and obscure legal guideline, the “Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct”, that encourages people to settle their differences without resorting to the courts.
Nominet’s basically saying that there was no need for Cartier to sue, because it already has procedures in place to deal with counterfeiters using fake Whois data.
Also offered in the defense are the facts that suspending a domain does not remove a web site, that Nominet does not operate web sites, and the following:

Nominet is not at liberty under its Terms and Conditions of Domain Name Registration to suspend .uk domain names summarily upon mere receipt of a demand from someone unconnected with the domain name registrant.

That seems to me to be among the most important parts of the defense.
If Cartier were to win this case, it may well set a precedent giving registries (in the UK at least, at first) good reason to cower when they receive dodgy take-down orders from multibillion-dollar brands.
Indeed, that seems to be what Cartier is going for here.
Unfortunately, Nominet has a track record of at least accelerating the takedown of domains based on nothing more than third-party “suspicion”. Its defense actually admits this fact, stating:

Inaccurate identity and contact information generally leads to the suspension of a domain within three weeks. Where suspicions of criminality are formally confirmed by a recognised law enforcement agency, suspension may be very significantly expedited.

I wonder if this lawsuit would have happened had Nominet not been so accommodating to unilateral third-party take-down notices in the past.
In a statement to members today, a copy of which was sent to DI, Nominet encouraged internet users to report counterfeiting web sites to the police if and when they find them.

Nominet bans rape domains

Nominet has banned “rape” domains from the .uk space, following an independent review spurred by a newspaper article.
The company announced today that it is to adopt the recommendations of Lord Macdonald (pdf), who said domains that “signal or encourage serious sexual offences” should be deleted.
The policy applies retroactively and at least a dozen domains have already been suspended.
Nominet CEO Lesley Cowley said in a statement:

Even though we are only talking about a handful of domain names, we agreed that we do not want those domain names on the register – regardless of whether there was an associated website or content.

Under the new policy, Nominet will review all new domain name registrations within the first 48 hours. It said it will:

Institute a system of post-registration domain name screening, within 48 hours of registration, for domain names that appear to signal or encourage serious sexual offences. Where examples that meet these criteria are discovered, they will be suspended or de-registered.

It’s pretty vague at the moment, both in terms of what constitutes a “signal” and how the oversight process will be carried out. Nominet said it will reveal implementation details at a later date.
Importantly, there will be no pre-screening of domains for potentially offensive substrings. It will still be possible to register names if you’re a “therapist” or enjoy “grapes”.
Macdonald said in his report:

any process of pre-registration scrutiny is likely to be slow, technologically blunt, and have minimal useful impact. It would likely damage the credibility of the .uk space in the market place and it would bring few discernible advantages.

He seems to be envisaging a system of manual review, aided by keyword searches, that looks only for domains that seem to be unambiguously “egregious”. He wrote:

it is precisely because of the inadequacies of the screening technology that Nominet has available to it, and the utmost importance of avoiding unnecessary or mistaken interference with free expression rights, that any post registration screening process should be strictly designed to target only the most egregious examples

Keywords under scrutiny are likely to include “rape”, “incest”, “bestiality”, “paedophilia” and derivatives.
Macdonald noted that Nominet gets 20 – 25 registrations containing these strings per week, but that the “vast majority” were false positives that should not trigger a suspension.
The Macdonald report gives examples of existing domains that would be likely to trigger Nominet action, including rapeme.co.uk, rapemyteacher.co.uk and rapeporn.co.uk.
According to Whois records, all of the domains listed in the report have already been suspended by Nominet.
Macdonald wrote:

it is difficult to see any reasonable basis whatsoever upon which the registration of a domain name such as rapemyteacher.co.uk could be consistent with any reasonable terms of business that Nominet might draw up.

It’s not clear from archives whether many of these domains even led to sites with content. An Archive.org capture of rapeporn.co.uk from 2009 contains a short essay (looks like a hasty attempt to justify the domain to me) on why rape fantasy and actual rape are different.
I suspect that “rapemyteacher.co.uk” was supposed to be a joke, a play on the popular site RateMyTeachers.com.
However, in Macdonald’s view, it’s easily possible for Nominet to suspend these names without infringing anyone’s free speech rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and UK law.
He said that in some cases the domain name itself may be illegal, if it encourages others to commitment crimes. Incitement is a crime, after all.
But his report seems to envisage that the use of the word “rape” may be justifiable when used in a figurative sense not related to actual sexual violence. It would also not be banned in positive contexts such as rape victim support services.
He recommended against instituting bans on swearwords and racist terms for similar reasons.
The one thing missing from the report, and Nominet’s response to it so far, is any requirement for Nominet to disclose which domain names it has suspended under the new policy.
That would be an important oversight mechanism, in my view.
If Nominet is going to be deleting names based on an as-yet-undisclosed review process, wouldn’t free speech be served by at least telling the public what has been censored?
What if rapemyteacher.co.uk was supposed to be a parody of RateMyTeachers.com? Did Nominet just suspend a humor site for no good reason and without telling anyone but the registrant?
The Macdonald report was commissioned following an outraged Sunday Times article based on a blog post by anti-porn crusader John Carr, who wanted a ban on “depraved or disgusting words”.
Neither Carr, the Sunday Times, Nominet or Macdonald have ever presented any examples of “egregious” .uk domain names leading to content encouraging or glorifying sexual violence, nor have they ever said that they’ve seen one with their own eyes.
It’s possible that such domains do not exist.
The review and the new Nominet policy, I think it’s fair to say, has probably not protected a single man, woman, child, corpse or sheep from unwelcome interference. It was, I suspect, a waste of time and resources.
But at first look the policy, properly implemented, does not appear to present a huge risk of infringing free speech rights or throwing up vast numbers of false positives.

Prince Charles first to get a second-level .uk name

The household of Prince Charles, the Prince of Wales, has become one of the first bodies to receive a second-level .uk domain name, Nominet announced this morning.
The name princeofwales.uk was among four delegated to organizations that have previously used third-level .gov.uk names but which are actually independent of the UK government. Nominet said:

Nominet has delegated the new second-level .uk domain names royal.uk, princeofwales.uk, supremecourt.uk and jcpc.uk to the Royal Household, the Household of the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, the Supreme Court, and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council respectively.

These were among 69 second-level names requested by the British government for special treatment in advance of the broader Direct.uk initiative, which is due to kick of mid-2014.
The full list of government names will be published in February, Nominet said.
Under Direct.uk, registrants of .co.uk names will get five years to decide whether they want to register the matching .uk name.

Nominet drops libel lawsuit against domain blogger

UK registry Nominet has withdrawn its lawsuit against a domainer who had allegedly published “defamatory” remarks about CEO Lesley Cowley on his blog.
The defamation complaint was filed against Graeme Wingate over his blog Avoid.co.uk in January.
Nominet said yesterday that it “continues to refute entirely the untrue allegations made” on the site, which focuses on Cowley’s “dishonest” behavior surrounding Direct.uk and the ongoing controversy related to the 2008 board-level scandal and subsequent employment tribunal of former policy chief Emily Taylor.
Cowley said in a statement:

With a major programme of work underway to transform the .uk namespace, this action is now an unwelcome distraction. I refute the allegations entirely, but recognise that a far better use of the team’s time and energy is to focus on steering Nominet safely through a period of unprecedented change.

Nominet will pay Wingate’s costs.
It’s difficult to see this as anything other than a win for Wingate, who has continued to blog throughout the legal proceedings.
Wingate stood unsuccessfully for a seat on Nominet’s board of directors this year, alongside fellow Nominet critic Lucien Taylor, husband to Emily.

Nominet approves direct second-level .uk domains

Get ready for a backlash — Nominet has committed to start offering second-level domain names under .uk for the first time.
Starting next year, you’ll be able to register example.uk, rather than only third-level names such as example.co.uk and example.org.uk.
The announcement today comes after at least two consultation periods over the last year or so, which provoked a strong negative reaction from many in the .uk domain investor community.
Concerns were raised that allowing .uk would allow names to fall into the hands of the wrong people, and that the cost to UK business would be prohibitively high.
“We all want shorter, snappier names,” CEO Lesley Cowley said. “But we appreciate that not everyone shares that view so as a board we had to very carefully consider what’s in the best interest of the public.”
Nominet has introduced a few new ideas that seem to be designed to address these criticisms.
First, every owner of a .co.uk domain name will be given a free five-year reservation on the matching .uk SLD. If you own example.co.uk, you’ll have five years to decide whether to pay for the .uk version.
Cowley told DI that Nominet’s market research suggested that UK businesses repaint their trucks and get new stationery every five years anyway, so the pressure to rebrand around a new domain would be alleviated.
“There was some concern that businesses would feel forced to register a .uk,” she said. “We would not want that to be the case. We want people to consider in their own time whether they want to move.”
In cases where matching .co.uk and .org.uk (or .me.uk etc) domains are owned by different people, the .co.uk gets the free reservation and the .org.uk is locked out for five years.
Where there’s a .org.uk with no matching .co.uk, the .org.uk registrant gets the free reservation, Cowley said.
Domains registered prior to October 28 2013 — when the Nominet board voted on the proposal — will qualify for the free reservation, as will domains registered after that date when there are no colliding third-level domains.
The price for a .uk SLD is to be set at £3.50 for a one-year reg and £2.50 for one year of a multi-year registration. That’s the same as .uk wholesale prices today.
Why do it at all?
While Cowley admitted that .uk registration growth has been slowing recently, something being experienced by many ccTLDs and gTLDs, she said the main reason for the SLD change was demand.
Nominet has done some market research showing only 2% of UK businesses do not want the SLD option in .uk, compared to 72% that do, according to the company.
“People have been saying for some years that it would be good to drop the ‘co’ in .uk,” said Cowley. “It’s clunky. The French and Germans manage to have direct in .fr and .de, so why can’t we do that as well?”