Restoring Nominet’s Purpose: update
Earlier this month we reported that we’d signed up to the Public Benefit campaign to reform Nominet, the company responsible for overseeing UK domain registrations.
The campaign was seeking 5% of Nominet’s membership in order to call an EGM to replace Nominet’s non-elected directors. The campaign quickly achieved this, the EGM request was delivered, and Nominet have now set the date for the EGM as 22nd March 2021. Members representing more than 17% of Nominet voting rights have now signed up to support the campaign. Typical AGM voting turnout is well under 10% suggesting that the vote is pretty much certain to succeed, at least according to The Register’s analysis.
If there was ever any doubt about the need for reform, Nominet’s response to the EGM letter has completely removed this.
Nominet’s CEO rushed out a statement hoping that:
all constituencies will be able to engage in a constructive way
At the same time, Nominet responded to Public Benefit’s email requesting member information by providing 575 printed pages:
It was actually 575 pages of member's details! (200 was the guestimate from the office)
So @KrystalHosting planted 575 trees in the UK to offset Nominet's nonsense!
Check them out at https://t.co/Yv62YcpP5n https://t.co/4ETnmUSJyW pic.twitter.com/pKvn2c9o64
— Public Benefit .UK (@publicbenefituk) February 10, 2021
This would seem to be more obstructive than constructive.
The EGM request made two motions: (1) sack the current directors; and (2) appoint two interim directors to take over. Nominet are claiming that the second motion is illegal (contrary to legal advice received by Public Benefit) and are refusing to put it on the EGM agenda. They now have the gall to claim that the EGM request destabilises Nominet because it does not provide a credible plan to replace the current leadership.
Is this just about reducing UK domain fees?
It’s been suggested that this campaign is about Nominet members, who are mostly companies like us that resell domain registrations, trying to reduce the price that they pay for domains. This seems to ignore the fact that the domain market is very competitive, and UK domains are particularly easy to transfer between registrars. Provided that the price is the same for all members, what that price is doesn’t make much difference to us.
Nonetheless, we’re very happy to make a public commitment that if the EGM process results in a reduction in the price that we pay for domains, we will pass on that saving in the price that we charge.