Policy Discussions & Consultations

.UK Modernisation, Standardisation and Legacy Service Retirement Consultation

We are currently seeking feedback from stakeholders on our proposals to modernise and standardise some of our technical systems and processes. The consultation is open until 26 April 2024, see our news story for details. For background information see Registrar Resources.

Government Consultation

In November 2023 we responded to the government’s request for evidence in it’s review of ‘Cyber resilience of the UK’s critical national infrastructure.’

Nominet’s Articles of Association

Consultation on Nominet’s articles has now closed. For more information, please see here.

New Expiring Domain Process

Following consultations in 2019 and 2020 and a recommendation from our .UK Registry Advisory Council, are implementing a change in the .UK domain lifecycle.

This new process will:

  • Replace the current random cancellation of a domain over a 24 hours period with cancellation at a specified time.
  • Provide ‘drop lists’ of the domains which will be cancelled and the times that they will become available for re-registration.

For full details of the consultation process and further information about the changes see our consultation response.

2020 .UK Expiring Domains Consultation

Our consultation period has now closed, thank you to everyone who submitted a response and participated in our virtual roundtable events. We announced an initial response to the Expiring Domains Consultation on 27th August 2020. Following our member webinar in October, we are now finalising our next steps. Our full summary of responses and next steps will follow in 2021.

Following our 2019 .UK Policy Consultation, we have decided to implement a more transparent process for informing registrars and the wider public when an expired domain name will be made available for re-registration. We are also considering different methods for releasing highly desired expired domains which are contested (i.e. there are multiple parties seeking to register the domain name).

This consultation comprises two areas for input:

  1. Whether domains should be made available for re-registration throughout the day at a specific point in time, based on the time stamp we have for the original registration, or be released at specified single point in time, say 2pm every day; and
  2. Since a very small minority of domains are intensely contested with multiple parties interested in re-registration, whether to alter the way in which we release these domains. The options for alteration are (1) auction model – two variations, and (2) economically controlled access to expiring domains.

Read the consultation briefing document.

If you have any questions, please contact [email protected]

2019 .UK Policy Consultation

Thank you to everyone participated in our 2019 .UK Policy Consultation.

The consultation focused on three issues:

(i) Reducing the use of .UK domain names for phishing attacks

(ii) Implementing law enforcement landing pages following suspensions for criminal activity

(iii) Implementing a .UK drop list to provide a transparent and orderly process for the re-registration of expired domains

We have reviewed your input and published our response:

Further activity

  • We have now published our Criminal Practices Policy. This document clarifies Nominet’s existing approach to addressing criminal activity in .UK which has been in place since 2014. If you have any questions, email [email protected].

Consultation Documents

Ensuring .UK policies reflect current expectations of the UK internet community is an ongoing process of continuous improvement.

When doing so it may be useful to review the forward-looking roadmap we included in our 2019 .UK Policy Consultation briefing document.

2018

Proxy Services Framework

Nominet invited feedback from stakeholders on a proposal for a new Proxy Services framework.

GDPR

Nominet invited feedback on a proposal to adapt our WHOIS database in light of the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Previous consultations include

  • Second level domain registrations
  • Changes to the rules of registration for ltd.uk and plc.uk
  • Domain expiry policy
  • Review of the .UK Registrar Agreement
  • Data quality policy
  • Review of domain registration policy and the terms and conditions governing registration
  • Registrant terms and conditions
  • Contact data disclosure in the .UK WHOIS
  • Consolidation and changes to the dispute resolution service policy and procedure

If you require details of any of our previous consultations please contact us at [email protected]

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