A nice day for democracy
Unelected board members. Tomorrow, unelected MPs.
Nominet members have voted overwhelmingly in favour of a raft of measures designed to avoid the government taking control of the .uk registry. At the non-profit company's EGM on Wednesday, more than 90 per cent of voting members agreed its constitution should be changed to allow it to appoint new board members without a vote, …
It's always been aboout the fact that 3/4 of those that can vote are people with a vested interest in the sale (and resales) of domain names. Although Nominet state that they operate on a "first come, first served" basis, all of their registered members actually get advance notice and therefore have a distinct advantage on the domain names when they come up for disposal.
They also allow the sale of .uk TLDs to people or organisations with no actual presence in this country - and this has lead to a number of fake web sites scamming a lot of money from the unitiated. They therefore are "unwitting" accomplices in fraud (the legal argument is that they cannot control what the buyer does)
Nominet is no longer fit for purpose - I don't normally support government takeover of business, but in this case, it is clear that the voting members are trying to make it look as if they are playing fair and making changes, but are actually preserving the staus quo.