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Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

theregister.com

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Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#11

Post by ohashi »

ruph123 wrote: post #3

Can someone please give a little bit more context for people out of the loop? It’s confusing to understand who stands for what (board of .uk, that company, the ex BBC dude) and what is/was going on.

Nominet (.UK) is a membership organization, basically anyone registering more than a few domains would be interested in becoming one. There are some 2,000+ members. The voting is determined by number of domains registered but capped at 3% voting power (so large players like GoDaddy have a large voice - and board seat). Nominet has been trying to go from a non profit entity which provides registry services into a startup under the recent management (many of whom were just fired by the members in the latest vote). They also started paying themselves ridiculous amounts of money (see: the complaints https://publicbenefit.uk/)

The campaign proposed a vote (EGM) on removing 5 board members and putting in two well respected veterans (Sir Michael Lyons and Axel Pawlik) to help steward the organization back to its core mission of running a registry and giving profits to charity instead of raising executive salaries and trying to be a tech company (Nominet tried to do things like self-driving cars and spectrum management, which all failed and lost money).

The campaign was a success despite Nominet spending (millions?) spreading FUD about how government would intervene and it would be a disaster. 5 board members were removed including the CEO (who resigned one day before - what a pathetic way to go). The remaining board then decided to put one removed board member as the interim ceo (yeah, wtf? members literally just voted her out). And now they are ignoring the second half of what the whole campaign was about, reforming the organization, they aren't bringing in Sir Michael Lyons and Axel Pahlik, instead they feel capable to recruit their own.

I'd bet a second EGM coming to remove the rest of the board which continues to spit in the face of its members and ignore their wishes.

Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#12

Post by ruph123 »

ohashi wrote: post #11
ruph123 wrote: post #3

Can someone please give a little bit more context for people out of the loop? It’s confusing to understand who stands for what (board of .uk, that company, the ex BBC dude) and what is/was going on.

Nominet (.UK) is a membership organization, basically anyone registering more than a few domains would be interested in becoming one. There are some 2,000+ members. The voting is determined by number of domains registered but capped at 3% voting power (so large players like GoDaddy have a large voice - and board seat). Nominet has been trying to go from a non profit entity which provides registry services into a star…

Thank you so much! Man I cannot believe I missed all that drama.

Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#14

Post by CallingOutBS »

southerntofu wrote: post #6

ICANN has failed us, Nominet has failed us, Public Interest Registry has failed us. We definitely need some better system where a single entity going rogue can't affect millions of domain owners. I can see two approaches. One is where we make it technically impossible for DNS operators higher in the tree to mess with us. That's what the GNU Name System proposes with the "hyper hyper local root", a petname system whic…

> One is where we make it technically impossible for DNS operators higher in the tree to mess with us. That's what the GNU Name System proposes with the "hyper hyper local root", a petname system which supports delegation, to defeat censorship.

DNS and our existing registries are too embedded in too many critical systems, businesses and workflows for it to be replaced by a niche unproven system, over the relatively small cost of domains.

Improving the governance of existing structures is feasible and useful.

Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#15

Post by selfhoster11 »

CallingOutBS wrote: post #14
southerntofu wrote: post #6

ICANN has failed us, Nominet has failed us, Public Interest Registry has failed us. We definitely need some better system where a single entity going rogue can't affect millions of domain owners. I can see two approaches. One is where we make it technically impossible for DNS operators higher in the tree to mess with us. That's what the GNU Name System proposes with the "hyper hyper local root", a petname system whic…

> One is where we make it technically impossible for DNS operators higher in the tree to mess with us. That's what the GNU Name System proposes with the "hyper hyper local root", a petname system which supports delegation, to defeat censorship. DNS and our existing registries are too embedded in too many critical systems, businesses and workflows for it to be replaced by a niche unproven system, over the relatively s…

Those new systems retrofit into the existing DNS system very easily. There is no excuse not to try new approaches.

Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#16

Post by robalfonso »

southerntofu wrote: post #6

ICANN has failed us, Nominet has failed us, Public Interest Registry has failed us. We definitely need some better system where a single entity going rogue can't affect millions of domain owners. I can see two approaches. One is where we make it technically impossible for DNS operators higher in the tree to mess with us. That's what the GNU Name System proposes with the "hyper hyper local root", a petname system whic…

Quote>>>

They're half a dozen lines of text (counting glue records and DNSSEC anchors) in a database, it's OUTRAGEOUS we have to pay for that at all.

This is not what you are paying for. Every time this argument comes up it hides the real problem...what you are paying for is the legal wrangling, security overhead and general compliance that comes with the internet.

Phishing, trademarks, spam, business disputes,and valid legal requests will all still exist no matter who runs things. Those costs are what your domain fees really have to cover.

It’s been a very long time since domain costs were highly dependent on the technical requirements of the data they represent.

Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#17

Post by rikroots »

samizdis wrote: post #7
ruph123 wrote: post #3

Can someone please give a little bit more context for people out of the loop? It’s confusing to understand who stands for what (board of .uk, that company, the ex BBC dude) and what is/was going on.

Not sure if this helps, but it gives a little background. This piece [1] from The Telegraph was published before the chiefs were voted out in the EGM. It says that Google, a Nominet member, was expected by activists to abstain in the EGM vote. The Nominet saga seems to be, roughly, split between small UK members (activists unhappy with Nominet's leadership/direction), and larger overseas members (GoDaddy etc) who see…

Have to say I was surprised when I saw Michael Lyons's name pop up as a candidate for Nominet chairman. I went searching and found this The Register article[1] about a report he did for Nominet on their future governance and operations[2] which allowed the pieces to click into place.

Sir Michael has form for not delivering the answers he was hired to deliver, so the outcome of his report for Nominet is no surprise to me. I think the man is allergic to whitewash[3].

[1] - https://www.theregister.com/2016/02/05/michael_lyons_tells_n...

[2] - https://publicbenefit.uk/resources/Sir-Michael-Lyons-Report-...

[3] - I worked with Sir Michael on his Lyons Inquiry into Local Government, so this admittedly anecdotal evidence is at least first-hand anecdotal evidence.

Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#18

Post by marcinzm »

southerntofu wrote: post #6

ICANN has failed us, Nominet has failed us, Public Interest Registry has failed us. We definitely need some better system where a single entity going rogue can't affect millions of domain owners. I can see two approaches. One is where we make it technically impossible for DNS operators higher in the tree to mess with us. That's what the GNU Name System proposes with the "hyper hyper local root", a petname system whic…

>a democratic non-profit foundation

Isn't that what Nominet basically was and here we are?

>Why are we still paying >10$/year for less than a kilobyte of information hosting just so that shady businesses can make a profit?

To provide a minimum barrier to people simply writing a script and registering literally every domain in existence. Either to resell or troll. Probably also to provide a financial paper trail in case of abuse, illegal activity or other reasons.

Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#19

Post by fanf2 »

ohashi wrote: post #11
ruph123 wrote: post #3

Can someone please give a little bit more context for people out of the loop? It’s confusing to understand who stands for what (board of .uk, that company, the ex BBC dude) and what is/was going on.

Nominet (.UK) is a membership organization, basically anyone registering more than a few domains would be interested in becoming one. There are some 2,000+ members. The voting is determined by number of domains registered but capped at 3% voting power (so large players like GoDaddy have a large voice - and board seat). Nominet has been trying to go from a non profit entity which provides registry services into a star…

Yes. A couple more points worth noting:

Sir Michael Lyons wrote a report on Nominet some years ago. The Nominet board basically ignored all his recommendations, though his report was widely supported by the membership.

Axel Pawlik was head of RIPE, which is an Internet membership organisation with a good relationship with its members and a reputation for doing worthwhile things for the benefit of the Internet as a whole.

Re: Nominet chooses civil war over compromise by rejecting ex-BBC Trust chairman

#20

Post by doublerabbit »

marcinzm wrote: post #18
southerntofu wrote: post #6

ICANN has failed us, Nominet has failed us, Public Interest Registry has failed us. We definitely need some better system where a single entity going rogue can't affect millions of domain owners. I can see two approaches. One is where we make it technically impossible for DNS operators higher in the tree to mess with us. That's what the GNU Name System proposes with the "hyper hyper local root", a petname system whic…

>a democratic non-profit foundation Isn't that what Nominet basically was and here we are? >Why are we still paying >10$/year for less than a kilobyte of information hosting just so that shady businesses can make a profit? To provide a minimum barrier to people simply writing a script and registering literally every domain in existence. Either to resell or troll. Probably also to provide a financial paper trail in ca…

> To provide a minimum barrier to people simply writing a script and registering literally every domain in existence. Either to resell or troll. Probably also to provide a financial paper trail in case of abuse, illegal activity or other reasons.

But that happens anyway, what has it discouraged?

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