That title is highly editorialized. The actual effect is just that .eu domains will have to be renewed through a registrar that's established in the EU. Most major registrars probably already fulfill that requirement, and those that don't shouldn't have any problem with founding an EU subsidiary.
EDIT: Missed the part where "Accredited
.eu
Registrars
will not be entitled to process any request for the registration of
or for renewing registrations of .eu domain names by those [UK] undertakings, organisations
and persons." Still, I bet the vast majority of domains will be transferred to some shell entity in the EU, even if it's just domain owners selling off domains they can't renew anymore.
.eu domains are restricted to EU, Norway, Iceland
or Liechtenstein residents and organizations[1]. By leaving, UK residents and organizations not established in one of those countries lose the right to register or renew a domain. Plus, even existing registration can be summarily revoked by the Registry.
Really it's the victory of a decades-long press "fake news" campaign. For years papers and politicians alike have misreported EU directives, ECJ decisions, ECHR decisions (not even part of the EU), and UK human rights law decisions. This is the result.
The UK media have also given up on providing an accurate picture of the country outside London, and on any kind of industrial or trade news coverage that isn't entirely driven by press releases. And the 2008 crisis made life worse for a lot of people in ways the government has done nothing to address.
It's quite funny because UK media and press workers also live in UK so they are equally responsible for what is going to happen to them and to the whole country.
The EU knows what the pain points are and has done nothing to alleviate them. They deserve the backlash they are getting from the UK and East Europe, and their arrogance will cost them even more in the coming years.
Well, the major pain point of the EU has voted itself out, so the doing nothing strategy has worked there.
As for some "East Europe": for better or worse, they're part of the club. If they play by the rules, their objections must be heard. I disagree vehemently with them, but some workable compromise that nobody likes will be found, and things move on. That's politics. I don't have to like it as long as I understand the necessity.
As an Italian living in Poland, I can tell you that the Poles' approach is about 1000 times better, especially in regards to immigration, which has completely ruined Italy (although not because of the immigrants, but rather our inability to deal with anything seriously).
By "democracy" we mean "a non-proportional system with an unelected upper house, which is currently dealing with a scandal involving opaque campaign finance arrangements that may have broken the law, and the assistance of shady companies that specialise in tipping the scales of elections with dirty tricks in e.g. Kenya"?
I dislike the idea that domain names can be geographically restricted. Additionally this .eu cancellation seems a wanton and bureaucratic attack on the U.K. given Brexit has only recently been triggered.
It's very Brexit to say that, when rules which have always applied to non-EU countries will apply to the UK once the UK is a non-EU country, this is an "attack".
(The web page says "As of the withdrawal date", not today)
Most domains are restricted in some may - usually geographically. Some have even stricter rules (.cat for example requires you to publish your website in the Catalan language).
After Brexit people living in the UK no longer fulfill the requirements to own a .eu domain. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
But they are not in the eu. Surely the higher percentage of people from Britain who want to leave the EU would like to be treated like a non-EU country.
British is currently in the EU. No one really knows yet whether it will leave in any meaningful way.
I’d like the EU to let UK citizens who want to remain part of the EU do so. That would be rather fun wouldn’t it? Trolling the idiots who’ve seized control here.
Sure I want the people who want to remain to be able to, but the decision was made as a country. If they don't split into two it'll be pretty hard and difficult to accept Britons wanting to be in the EU.
Maybe if they privately pay membership fees? It's interesting to think about, but would encompass much more than a TLD.
The purpose of .eu domains is to indicate to the people accessing the site that the site owner is established in the EU. Being "inclusive" of people not in the EU would defeat the purpose.
How? That domain's rules are set by a contract among states. It can be changed, and relevant changes to it are currently being negotiated, headed by by Michel Barnier and David Davis. Do you mean that they should change their working order, or do you mean someone else should negotiate some separate/overlapping changes?
Okay let's pretend I said lots of them instead of most of them. What does that change? The rules for .eu aren't anything out of the ordinary. Australia has exactly the same requirements IIRC. .uk also requires a local contact.
local contact is very different, it means anyone in the world can use that domain. EU is quite restrictive even by the standards of its constituent countries, e.g. germany doesnt require you to be a german resident.
The rules allow EEA members that are not part of the EU , like norway, to use .eu. Given that there are so many british domains registered it seems like breaking them is the wrong approach - a simple change in the rules would do it.
There is plenty of restriction on various TLDs. If you don't like them you can always register in another TLD with less strict rules or run your own DN System.
This is an ridiculous and blatantly hostile move, esp. considering the fact that most EU countries don't even have that policy for their own ccTLD. EU has nothing to win here and this doesn't benefit the .eu domain.
rules can change, even temporarily. the UK will probably join in some future agreement with the EU. it could even be part of a brexit deal. the EU already offers this exemption to EEA members
Sure; if and when the rules change, I'm sure a new update will be issued. But that doesn't change the fact that this is a straightforward application of the existing rules, which were approved long before Brexit.
This is just a reminder that the rules that were already in place for all other "third countries" (non-EU or EEA countries) will apply to the UK if/when they become that. If the negotiations turn out that we stay part of the EEC, then this won't apply as the UK won't be a "third country".
I understand not letting people in the UK register new .eu domain names. But by making it impossible (or just hard, more likely) to renew domain names imho they are needlessy hurting people and businesses who had bet on the EU.
Because they have had established entities in it and will continue to do so until March 2019?
After all, establishing an entity in the United Kingdom has, until now, been an equal level of 'betting' as establishing an entity anywhere else in the EU.
And if you bet on the top 500 companies in the stock market, and one drops below the 500th place, nobody will redesign the S&P to fit your portfolio either. You have to rebalance your bet.
> […] they are needlessy hurting people and businesses who had bet on the EU.
They, in this case, being the British government performing the Brexit, not the EU enforcing the agreed-upon rules. The Brexit has consequences, be they negative or positive, that are real and can have a lot of impact on the lives of both British and EU citizens. The British government has accepted these as representatives of their voters.
I don't get what's not classy, it's just a reminder of the fact that you need to be part of EEA to register a EU domain. If hard brexit applies, this will apply for the UK.
It was the responsibility of the leave campaign to study all the implications of leaving EU and explaining those to the public, I find it actually rather classy of the EU to take time to give information that should have been provided by the leave campaign leaders in the first place.
I've seen this rule commonly applied to HN submissions. To me, this title is clearly editorializing and more misleading than the original. There is no mention of "317k .eu domains" in the text. There is even no explicit mention of cancellation. What is mentioned is eligibility for renewals and new registrations.
After I first read about it I did some light cursory Googling around, and the press coverage that was the most detailed at the time was @ The Register [1]. Although they report the number to be ~317k, they do not disclose a source -- but I chose to go with it anyway.
To be honest I forgot that folks around here can get their panties in a real bunch over the titles of submissions -- and I'm not saying they're wrong, but in my mind the title is far less important than the actual meat of the issue and the discussion/debate that it (hopefully) generates here on HN. However, there are rules for the titles, and it wasn't my intention to break them. It was my mistake.
It isn't informative if it's untrue, and there's no way for us to easily verify how true it is. That's one reason we have the rules about titles at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
Hi, I submitted this article (and it's original title). FWIW (not that you asked), but I don't mind at all if the title of the submission is changed. I fully understand why you have the rules, and it was not my intention to go against them. IMHO, the 'title' of the submission is far, far less important than the actual meat of the issue, and in the context of HN, the entire point of submission, at least to me, is to foster some [hopefully] interesting dialog, discussion, and debate (while remaining civilized of course, we're all adults here, everyone should act like it)
Maybe the question was meant to be if English is going to remain as a "procedural language", that is one of those few languages used for the internal business of the Commission. Currently they are English, German, French. More about that at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Languages_of_the_European_Unio...
My bet is yes, even if Ireland and Malta were leaving the EU: everybody knows English, only a few know any other language.
There are 24 official EU languages, many of them from countries with less influence than Ireland, so I find it hard to believe English won't be official.
That said, it might not longer be a "procedural" language (status currently only held by English, French and German). But even then, I wouldn't bet on it. English is too ingrained at this point.
Apart from the practical advantages of keeping English, it’s an official language of Ireland and Malta, and de facto official in Cyprus. All three are member states of the European Union.
Interestingly enough, there is no official language in either England or the UK — although other languages do have official status in other parts of the UK.
I think it will always remain an unofficial language in the EU and removing it as an official language is likely too much of a hassle.
I do hope the withdrawal of the UK will lead to respective citizens of Ireland and Malta enjoying and practicing their own language more, with English being promoted to the language for international cooperation, but nowhere really spoken at home in the EU, because, well, cosmic irony I guess.
At least pro-Brexit campaign group LEAVE.EU will have to find a new domain name. It's not just their domain, it's the name of their organisation as a whole...
If that would be enough they would already offer it like they do for many other TLDs. You need more than a "contact" (i.e., address) inside the EU to register a .eu domain.
Proxies are not allowed under the rules. You might fly under the radar, but if the Registry sees that your website company info doesn't match the registration info, you're liable to lose the domain.
It's the registrar rules being enforced exactly like they always have been. The Rules say "EU only". If the UK is no longer in the EU then the simply conclusion is that the domain ownership will be revoked.
No; UK domain owners will be prevented from renewing their domains, but it doesn't say they'll automatically lose them. From what I can tell, if you renew just before March 2019, you can keep your domain until 2029. Although, the Registry will be able to revoke them, so it's not guaranteed.
Those who want the UK to remain in the EU will see this as just one damaging consequence of the UK's decision to leave. Conversely, Brexiteers will see this as an example of maladministration by an EU bureaucracy, and another demonstration of why the UK needs to exit. Sadly, there will be no consensus.
Putting aside the politics, this seems like a very poor decision. Historically, I believe most registering authorities have made great efforts to grandfather-in prior domains, for practical reasons apparent to most visitors of this site.
Additionally, shoddy treatment of 10% of current registrees will do nothing to increase the perceived value of an .eu domain. I also note that it appears the EU commission didn't even discuss the policy with the company that manages the .eu domain:
This doesn't seem to immediately affect existing registrations, so they can renew for up to ten years before the withdrawal date, and start redirecting people to some other domain.
... as of the withdrawal date ... the Registry for .eu will be entitled to revoke such domain name on its own initiative and without submitting the dispute to any extrajudicial settlement of conflicts ...
That's a fair comment. I hadn't considered that perspective.
I'm aware of several TLDs that require evidence of residency/trade within the geographic region for the purpose of registration, but I don't think any of them require it in perpetuity for renewals; it's this that seems problematic to me. In principle, URLs are based on a degree of immutability: saying that a domain name must change when circumstances change seems at odds with the architectural fundamentals of the web, in which case I question the value of establishing a .eu domain at all.
I can't find any reference to a condition that forbids owners from renewing a .eu domain after leaving the EU in more usual circumstances, like emigration. If true it would be a very unreasonable condition which would seriously undermine the value of the domain for would be registrants, so I'm surprised it's not something that's been highlighted before. If it's not the case then clearly brexit exiteers ought to be treated at least as well.
In reality this announcement is likely to be politically motivated posturing on an issue which is to be agreed as part of the brexit negotiations, not something that is going to be decreed unilaterally.
Must be
"a
natural person resident within the
European Union,
Norway, Iceland or
Liechtenstein"
If the Registrant files a request for a Domain Name registration and is unable
to meet, or no longer meets, the above conditions, the Registry is entitled to
reject the request or to revoke the Domain Name concerned at any time in
accordance with Sections 6
.4
and
8.4
of the Terms and Conditions.
(Why Liechtenstein? Not part of the EU:
"Liechtenstein is a member of the United Nations, European Free Trade Association, and the Council of Europe, and while not being a member of the European Union, the country participates in both the Schengen Area and European Economic Area. It also has a customs union and a monetary union with Switzerland")
> "is to be agreed as part of the brexit negotiations"
They need to get a bloody move on with this. There's a year left and a huge list of things in the same state of needing to be agreed.
Instance #945792 of the EU commission coming out with it's usual message:
"Bad voters ! BAD BAD BAD voters !"
"FU"
All the people defending this decision: do you seriously think a majority of Europeans would defend this decision ? Because that's the yardstick a government in a democratic nation should be measured by.
Apart from my fury, which is caused by having a .eu as my main domain and living in the UK - reverse DNS, mail, etc, all quite hard to change due to trust databases -, this leaves me with yet another enforcement that we are in desperate need of domains - or something similar - that is yours, yours for life, and can not be taken away.
.onion would be ideal, but Tor itself has been criminalised so well, that vanilla people are and would be frightened to visit them - and they might even be right, given the amount of supervision ISPs have nowadays.
.bit is not a solution, it's just another registrar in it's essence, and a rather complicated one, that needs namecoin.
Is anyone aware of a work-in-progress solution or had nobody thought about this during the re-decentralize haste?
107 comments
[ 223 ms ] story [ 554 ms ] threadEDIT: Missed the part where "Accredited .eu Registrars will not be entitled to process any request for the registration of or for renewing registrations of .eu domain names by those [UK] undertakings, organisations and persons." Still, I bet the vast majority of domains will be transferred to some shell entity in the EU, even if it's just domain owners selling off domains they can't renew anymore.
[1] https://eurid.eu/d/93742/Registration_Policy_EN.pdf
The level of pain and expenses that they are and will endure is really something else.
And for what..? Go figure.
Really it's the victory of a decades-long press "fake news" campaign. For years papers and politicians alike have misreported EU directives, ECJ decisions, ECHR decisions (not even part of the EU), and UK human rights law decisions. This is the result.
The UK media have also given up on providing an accurate picture of the country outside London, and on any kind of industrial or trade news coverage that isn't entirely driven by press releases. And the 2008 crisis made life worse for a lot of people in ways the government has done nothing to address.
It's also easy to exploy people's problems to rally them against a fake common enemy, and it worked wonderfully.
I wonder who gained from this, amd why they did it. I don't think they believed their own lies..?
And it did make me laugh for a few seconds.
As for some "East Europe": for better or worse, they're part of the club. If they play by the rules, their objections must be heard. I disagree vehemently with them, but some workable compromise that nobody likes will be found, and things move on. That's politics. I don't have to like it as long as I understand the necessity.
Such as?
(The web page says "As of the withdrawal date", not today)
After Brexit people living in the UK no longer fulfill the requirements to own a .eu domain. Seems pretty straight forward to me.
I’d like the EU to let UK citizens who want to remain part of the EU do so. That would be rather fun wouldn’t it? Trolling the idiots who’ve seized control here.
most TLDs are not restricted, including most EU countries.
The rules allow EEA members that are not part of the EU , like norway, to use .eu. Given that there are so many british domains registered it seems like breaking them is the wrong approach - a simple change in the rules would do it.
The rules of ccTLDs of member countries are completely irrelevant.
Or maybe they just wanted to prove the Brits right in wanting to leave.
After all, establishing an entity in the United Kingdom has, until now, been an equal level of 'betting' as establishing an entity anywhere else in the EU.
They, in this case, being the British government performing the Brexit, not the EU enforcing the agreed-upon rules. The Brexit has consequences, be they negative or positive, that are real and can have a lot of impact on the lives of both British and EU citizens. The British government has accepted these as representatives of their voters.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/.eu
It was the responsibility of the leave campaign to study all the implications of leaving EU and explaining those to the public, I find it actually rather classy of the EU to take time to give information that should have been provided by the leave campaign leaders in the first place.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.eu
"Notice to stakeholders: withdrawal of the United Kingdom and EU rules on .eu domain names"
I sincerely hope no-one in the UK is running a substantial business on an .EU domain; the damage of this could be significant for them.
Above from https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
I've seen this rule commonly applied to HN submissions. To me, this title is clearly editorializing and more misleading than the original. There is no mention of "317k .eu domains" in the text. There is even no explicit mention of cancellation. What is mentioned is eligibility for renewals and new registrations.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.eu#Actual_use says that the number of apparently UK owned .eu domains was 344,584, but there's no citation for that claim.
To be honest I forgot that folks around here can get their panties in a real bunch over the titles of submissions -- and I'm not saying they're wrong, but in my mind the title is far less important than the actual meat of the issue and the discussion/debate that it (hopefully) generates here on HN. However, there are rules for the titles, and it wasn't my intention to break them. It was my mistake.
---
1: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/03/29/eu_dumps_300000_uko...
Submitted title was "European Commission to cancel 317k .eu domains with registrants in UK".
My bet is yes, even if Ireland and Malta were leaving the EU: everybody knows English, only a few know any other language.
That said, it might not longer be a "procedural" language (status currently only held by English, French and German). But even then, I wouldn't bet on it. English is too ingrained at this point.
Languages are such a political thing. The whole recent (century) history of Gaeilge is a reaction to UK influence.
Interestingly enough, there is no official language in either England or the UK — although other languages do have official status in other parts of the UK.
I do hope the withdrawal of the UK will lead to respective citizens of Ireland and Malta enjoying and practicing their own language more, with English being promoted to the language for international cooperation, but nowhere really spoken at home in the EU, because, well, cosmic irony I guess.
If that would be enough they would already offer it like they do for many other TLDs. You need more than a "contact" (i.e., address) inside the EU to register a .eu domain.
What do you mean "more than an address"?
Putting aside the politics, this seems like a very poor decision. Historically, I believe most registering authorities have made great efforts to grandfather-in prior domains, for practical reasons apparent to most visitors of this site.
Additionally, shoddy treatment of 10% of current registrees will do nothing to increase the perceived value of an .eu domain. I also note that it appears the EU commission didn't even discuss the policy with the company that manages the .eu domain:
https://eurid.eu/en/news/ec-releases-communication-concernin...
From section 2 of the commission's notice:
... as of the withdrawal date ... the Registry for .eu will be entitled to revoke such domain name on its own initiative and without submitting the dispute to any extrajudicial settlement of conflicts ...
It does for me. Creates the image of an exclusive TLD with only genuine, trustable EU registrees.
I'm aware of several TLDs that require evidence of residency/trade within the geographic region for the purpose of registration, but I don't think any of them require it in perpetuity for renewals; it's this that seems problematic to me. In principle, URLs are based on a degree of immutability: saying that a domain name must change when circumstances change seems at odds with the architectural fundamentals of the web, in which case I question the value of establishing a .eu domain at all.
In reality this announcement is likely to be politically motivated posturing on an issue which is to be agreed as part of the brexit negotiations, not something that is going to be decreed unilaterally.
https://eurid.eu/media/filer_public/76/48/7648e621-0c5d-4c09...
Must be "a natural person resident within the European Union, Norway, Iceland or Liechtenstein"
If the Registrant files a request for a Domain Name registration and is unable to meet, or no longer meets, the above conditions, the Registry is entitled to reject the request or to revoke the Domain Name concerned at any time in accordance with Sections 6 .4 and 8.4 of the Terms and Conditions.
(Why Liechtenstein? Not part of the EU:
"Liechtenstein is a member of the United Nations, European Free Trade Association, and the Council of Europe, and while not being a member of the European Union, the country participates in both the Schengen Area and European Economic Area. It also has a customs union and a monetary union with Switzerland")
> "is to be agreed as part of the brexit negotiations"
They need to get a bloody move on with this. There's a year left and a huge list of things in the same state of needing to be agreed.
"Bad voters ! BAD BAD BAD voters !"
"FU"
All the people defending this decision: do you seriously think a majority of Europeans would defend this decision ? Because that's the yardstick a government in a democratic nation should be measured by.
This is the very first enforcement action from the commission (they normally come from Eurid)
.onion would be ideal, but Tor itself has been criminalised so well, that vanilla people are and would be frightened to visit them - and they might even be right, given the amount of supervision ISPs have nowadays.
.bit is not a solution, it's just another registrar in it's essence, and a rather complicated one, that needs namecoin.
Is anyone aware of a work-in-progress solution or had nobody thought about this during the re-decentralize haste?