Nominet

Type:	Private, Not-for-profit
Industry:	Registry
Founded:	UK, 1996
Founder(s):	Willie Black
Headquarters:	Minerva House, Edmund Halley Road, Oxford Science Park, Oxford, OX4 4DQ England
Country:	UK
Employees:	115 (2010)
Revenue:	£20 million (2010)
Website:	nominet.org.uk
Twitter:	@nominet
Key People
Eleanor Bradley, Director of Operations Gill Crowther, Director of HR Glenn Hayward, Director of Finance Phil Kingsland, Director of Marketing and Communications Simon McCalla, Director of IT

Nominet maintains the registry for .uk domain names, managing over eight million domain names. It announced in November, 2011 that it was becoming a registry operator for new gTLD ventures.

Nominet Trust

Nominet has launched a charitable foundation, the Nominet Trust, as it has been creating a profit surplus on its ordinary operations since 2003; its constitution forbids it from distributing surplus funds to members in the manner of a commercial company paying dividends, and so it turned tocharitable activities as a means of running down the excess funds. In September 2008, Nominet's board made an initial donation of £5m to its charitable offshoot, which will support "education, research and the funding of suitable projects for the benefit of UK internet stakeholders". Further donations have been made since this date.

In October, 2011, Nominet held an auction of short .co.uk domains, which brought in over 3 million pounds for its Nominet Trust.

History

The .uk ccTLD was first used during the 1980s, and at that time a voluntary group called the Naming Committee managed the registration of .uk domain names.

By the early 1990s, commercial companies started to sell domain names to customers. As demand for domain name registrations grew, it became clear that a voluntary group could no longer cope with the volume of registrations being requested. A new organization was needed to manage the .uk ccTLD and, as a result, Nominet UK was formed.

There was discussion about what type of corporation the registry should be. The options to set it up as a profit-making company or a charity were rejected, and Nominet was established in 1996 as a private, not-for-profit company, limited by guarantee.

Nominet began registering domain names on August 1st, 1996, and is now officially recognized by the UK Government as the manager of the .uk ccTLD.

Nominet has been involved in proposals to cut off the Internet access without due process for UK citizens when determined necessary by law enforcement. They have since responded to criticism and opinions submitted by concerned citizens and domain owners by limiting the powers of the police to order domains to be shuttered in its new, proposed changes to Nominet policy. The changes, proposed in November, 2011, were aided by the work of an "issue group", which was compromised of police officers, policy experts, academics, and technical experts. The proposed changes would state that only those sites that pose an immediate and significant risk to the public would be shut down without a court order or without notice to the registrant. Serious cases of botnets, phishing and fake pharmaceuticals sales are all considered illegal activities that pose an imminent risk. Other illegal activities, such as severely racist material, would need a court order to proceed, and Nominet would also allow time to alert the registrant and allow them to respond.

Recent Developments

In September, 2011, the city of London's official promoter, London & Partners, announced it was seeking proposals to run a .london GeoTLD. Nominet intends to respond, saying that they would run the space on a not-for-profit basis and turn the profits around to worthy causes, as the Nominet Trust already does. Other bids are expected from other English companies, such as CentralNic.

In November, 2011, Nominet suspended over 2,000 domain names that were identified by Metropolitan police as belonging to people engaged in fraudulent retail activities. This is the third year it has been doing this pre-Christmas crackdown on illegal retail practices. It worked with the appropriate registrars and notified the individuals in advance that there domains were being suspended as they were in breach of contract with Nominet.

Second Level Domains

Nominet maintains the register of .uk domain names which has over eight million domain names. Nominet also maintains many second-level domains, such as:

• .co.uk
• .org.uk
• .net.uk
• .ltd.uk
• .plc.uk
• .me.uk
• .sch.uk

There are a total of 15 SLDs after Nominet created judiciary.uk in November, 2011. Some of these extensions are reserved for special social sectors, such as the judiciary SLD.

Awards

• Thames Valley Business Magazine Awards, 'Best Place To Work,' Winner - 2009.
• Oxfordshire Business Awards, 'Customer and Staff Care', Winner - 2009.
• Oxfordshire Business Awards, 'Customer and Staff Care', Finalist - 2008.
• British Computer Society Organisational Excellence Awards, 'Women in IT' finalist - 2007.
• Thames Valley Business Magazine Awards 'Employer of Choice', Finalist - 2007.
• Best Companies Ltd., 'First Class Star Status' - 2008.
• Best Companies Ltd., 'First Class Star Status' - 2007.
• Sunday Times Top 100 Best Small Companies To Work For List - 2005.
• Best of British Industry Awards, Finalist - 2007.

External links

• Official website of Nominet
• Nominet Trust

Second Level Domain