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by kolp
854 days ago
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First, nobody owns a domain; it is assigned to a registrant, by the registry, via the registrar. No domain "owner" has ownership rights; you have the right to use the domain subject to the rules of the registry. If the rules of the registry require the registrant to be a citizen or body of the EU and the registrant no longer meets that requirement, the registrant loses the right to use the domain. Your proposed solution of grandfathering existing registrations would cause confusion or uncertainty for end users (site visitors) who could not ascertain with confidence that the organisation with which they were dealing was actually in the EU, or registered to an EU citizen or body. Your assertion that the EU enforced the established rules because they were "being dicks" to the UK is similar to the anti-EU tropes spouted by the anti-EU press in the UK, eg the EU is punishing Brits by making them use non-EU passport lanes, restricting their visits to 90 days, etc. Your fellow citizens voted (unfortunately) to leave the organisation and these are the consequences of non-membership. If you decide to leave your golf club, you don't get to continue using the golf course and clubhouse. |
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I don't buy that argument. A UK citizen can still register .eu TLD through a company they control in the EU, if they have the resources to do so. The EU's decision to rescind registrations for former EU citizens only really affects non-wealthy private citizens. The wealthy, and large companies, can get around the rule.
Secondly, there is precendent for this kind of thing. When Soviet Union broke up, .su domains registrants were allowed to keep their registrations despite now being Ukrainian or Estonian or whatever citizens. Similarly when Yugoslavia broke up, .yu registrants could keep theirs, they weren't forced to surrender.
Edit: And a union of nation states is not like a golf club. You cannot reduce the argument by analogy to a sports club membership. A political union is much more complex than that.
Citizenship, free movement etc., or course those could not continue after Brexit. Those are politically fundamental.
But when it comes to internet's DNS system, people have lives and businesses that are contingent on maintining exclusive control of a given set of characters on a DNS server. Basic security of the internet is built around the expectation of being able to maintain indefinite control of a domain.
Sure, the EU rules said domain owners must reside in EU/EEA but I expect that the possibility of a country leaving EU was not considered when that rule was written (certainly, I did not consider it at the time I registered the domain). It would be prudent and reasonable to revisit those rules in light of such a significant and unexpexted event as Brexit and the significant problems it would cause to affected existing .eu domain registrants. But no, this was simply impossible -- rules are rules! /s
Edit 2: Indeed, the EU did rewrite the rules. Because EU citizens remaining residing in the UK would also lose their registrations, the EU rewrote to rules to allow citizenship as well as residence to be a qualification for domain registration. So the argument that the rules were fixed in stone and known by everyone, and so should not be changed, does not hold water either. The EU did change the rules to account for Brexit. But chose to do harm to existing domain registrants from the UK anyway for no apparent benefit to anyone.