81,000 UK-Owned .EU Domains Suspended As Brexit Transition Ends (zdnet.com)
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An anonymous reader quotes a report from ZDNet: Tens of thousands of website owners who are based in the UK might have started the year with an unpleasant surprise: Eurid, the registry manager of .eu domain names, has suspended .eu domain names registered by UK citizens as a result of the regulatory changes caused by Brexit. Suspended domain names can no longer support a website or service like email, and owners now have three months to prove their right to run a .eu domain. This means updating contact data to transfer the .eu domain to an EU-subsidiary outside the UK; or declaring citizenship or residence of an EU member state.
Domain names will be re-instated as soon as contact data is updated, said Eurid -- but only for the next few months. Those who, after 31st March 2021, still haven't demonstrated their eligibility will see their domain name withdrawn, and made available again for general registration from January 2022 if no action is taken by then. Eurid said 81,000 domains, from 50,000 users, have been suspended. Eurid's suspension of UK domains comes after a series of mixed signals from the European Commission, which decides on the rules that guide the registration of .eu domains. EU regulations currently stipulate that .eu websites can only be allocated to EU citizens -- regardless of their place of residence -- as well as non-EU citizens and organizations established in a member state. In other words, once Brexit happened, UK-based .eu domains owned by UK citizens suddenly became non-EU websites hosted in a non-EU country.
Domain names will be re-instated as soon as contact data is updated, said Eurid -- but only for the next few months. Those who, after 31st March 2021, still haven't demonstrated their eligibility will see their domain name withdrawn, and made available again for general registration from January 2022 if no action is taken by then. Eurid said 81,000 domains, from 50,000 users, have been suspended. Eurid's suspension of UK domains comes after a series of mixed signals from the European Commission, which decides on the rules that guide the registration of .eu domains. EU regulations currently stipulate that .eu websites can only be allocated to EU citizens -- regardless of their place of residence -- as well as non-EU citizens and organizations established in a member state. In other words, once Brexit happened, UK-based .eu domains owned by UK citizens suddenly became non-EU websites hosted in a non-EU country.
Forgotten things (Score:2)
There will be a lot of those.
Forgotten things? (Score:2)
Seems fair (Score:5, Insightful)
Would like to do the same for
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Seems stupid to me, you have a business people go to that site and expect it to work and now don't maybe they store a contact/bookmark more than 4 years old and for the pettiness now people can't contact people, maybe people will set up fraudulent sites once the they are gone.
I kind of agree with domains in a country should be in that country but those times are gone. Maybe new registrations should have to belong to the country but needlessly breaking 81,000 domains is just petty, or do it when they go to r
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Except switching to a hoster in the EU is enough.
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This means updating contact data to transfer the .eu domain to an EU-subsidiary outside the UK; or declaring citizenship or residence of an EU member state.
That doesn't sound that simple, I am not quite sure what needs to be done to have an EU-subsidary, but if you are correct why do it in the first place apart from being slightly annoying.
Don't need a subsidiary (Score:2)
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No, you either need to be a citizen of an EU country, live in an EU country, or have a satellite office in an EU country. Businesses likely would have an EU subsidiary in another country and need to transfer ownership to the subsidiary. UK citizens need to show residency in the EU by changing their contact address to their EU address.
Of course, if you're using something like GoDaddy which owns the domain, you can certainly have them move their hosting to an E
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Every IT person for those 81000 domains should be fired. If it's personal, then you should have been paying attention. Heck, where were all the people trying to sell the UK domain name to the people who had EU domain names? Sounds like a huge business opportunity.
This transition should have taken place at least a year ago. If you waited, it's on the company/domain owner. This was like watching a glacier run into you for the last few years, and then at the last moment when it falls people complain.
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I would think that quite many have several domain names. Like we have several customers who have .com, .fi and .eu domain names all pointing to one location.
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Why? I owned one, and when the day came, it was no longer any use. I did pay attention, and I knew it was going to happen (not that the notices sent by Eurid were any good; they looked like poor phish attempts; it's only because I already knew what they were talking about was true that I even entertained reading them in entirety). .eu domains I had, simply because I knew they'd time out, and someone
All my hosting is now based on other domains. There just wasn't much point doing anything about any of the
Re:Seems fair (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not petty, it's doing exactly what the UK asked for. We wanted separation, loss of membership benefits, fewer freedoms etc.
Or at least some small minority of us did, and somehow they seem to be the only ones that matter now.
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It was actually about 33% of people voted to leave (but had no idea what that looked like), vs about 30% of people who voted remain, and there were a LOT of people who had absolutely no clue what the vote meant (because leave was anything between "You're all Doomed" and "There will be unicorns and icecream for all in a land of pure utopia").
And quite a few percentage points only voted leave to spite the Tories, and realised afterwards, they'd screwed everyone over by being enough to tip the scales over to "
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Brexit means Brexit, lol
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Or maybe those times are coming back? Isn't that what all of this is about? Enforcing borders & boundaries, asserting jurisdiction over people and industry, reigning in "clouds" that abstract location away. If it's petty, it's no more petty than the ideology of "America First!!" as a whole. (Suit to your own nationality of course)
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You sound exactly like our problem. "Fortress England" did not stand alone. We had Polish pilots flying our planes [wikipedia.org], not to mention Hungarians, Czechs, many from the empire / commonwealth and even a few Americans [wikipedia.org]. There the largest volunteer army every from India [wikipedia.org] and plenty more soldiers from, for example New Zealand and Australia and on the ground from almost every European country.
Our idiot nationalist / Brexiters have been trying to rewrite history ever since. The Poles were not even invited to the VE [polishatheart.com]
Email, what email? (Score:2)
I didn't receive an email about my .eu domain name.
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Spamcatcher may have filtered it out. The notices I got looked exactly like a poor phish attempt. I couldn't have done a worse notification job if I'd tried.
Well be fun when the spammers get in on it (Score:3, Interesting)
Going to be great when the spammers and malware C2 guys get in on grabbing up all these domains that are probably in peoples various trust list and have 'good history' associated with them.
thanks EU!
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They will be available for reassignment in around 361 days, time for people to get used to them being gone. .eu domain holders will reassign them to entities in the EU, and if that is not possible then they don't really have much right to exist anyway. .eu domains anyway. Most organisations use .com.
I imagine most
Speaking for myself, I have only run across one or two
Good lesson for anyone else with a .eu domain (Score:2)
Transition before you're forced to.
If this is catching anyone off guard (Score:3)
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Children (Score:2)
Why do Nations and Businesses look like children when they get upset?
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> Why do Nations and Businesses look like children when they get upset?
Don't hit, don't cheat, don't steal. Only children and nation states need constant reminders that these behaviors are not OK. OK, and psychopaths, but I repeat myself.
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Why do Nations and Businesses look like children when they get upset?
Nations? People. One in the US and one in the UK, currently.
Farage Has a New .CUNT domain (Score:3, Funny)
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The only thing worse than the idiots in charge would be the worse idiots who aren't. :)
Oh please (Score:3, Insightful)
There are already multiple foreign entities from outside the EU holding .eu domains via e-residency in Estonia:
https://e-resident.gov.ee/ [e-resident.gov.ee]
Apparently the EU is going so far as to single out those who attempt e-residency from the UK to prevent them from continuing to hold .eu domains; meanwhile, someone from the United States can still use this loophole.
Petty, through and through.
Re:Oh please (Score:4)
Estonia is Crime-R-Us (Score:3)
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E residency has genuine responsibilities and benefits for Estonia. It's not trivial to get either. It's not a loophole.
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Yep, looked into that a while back.. I was interested in the early potential to have some citizens of the UK eligible to maintain their EU credentials.
I, like you, am pretty sad about the whole mess.
Look what I've found (Score:3)
https://www.good-bye.eu/ [good-bye.eu]
http://www.fuck.eu/ [www.fuck.eu]
Don't judge me, I'm just being the messenger ...
Phonetic Proposal (Score:3)
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Lots of the UK looked very favourably on the EU (and still do). I'm one of those.
I've got family in France that I was hoping to move closer to when I retired, and that's now looking like it may not really be an option anymore.
There were a very small amount of very noisy people who hated the EU, and lots of very vocal people who believed that anyone who voted leave was some form of racist (but never actually bothered to check with any of the leavers as to exactly why they wanted to leave; lots had very vali
There's No Point Acting All Surprised About It. (Score:4, Funny)
*UK cries of protest*
"All the planning charts and provisioning orders have been on display in your local planning department in Brussels for twenty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now."
*more cries of protest*
"What do you mean you've never been to Brussels? For heaven's sake England, it's only four mouse clicks away you know. I'm sorry, but if you can't be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that's your own lookout. (more quietly) "I don't know. Apathetic bloody country, I've no sympathy at all."
Brexiteers voted for this ... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is what the brexiteers advocated, what brexit supporters voted for. You've said loudly and persistently for the last four years that you knew exactly what you voted for and dismissed all the warnings as fear mongering.
Yet somehow, now that things are going wrong, somehow all the consequences are somehow the fault of others.
Just own your decisions and stop blaming others, stop whinging this isn't what I voted for. It getting so bloody tiresome,
Well this it, project reality, you voted for it, own your decision.
Re:Petty Retribution (Score:5, Insightful)
"Petty retribution"? Are you retarded?
The rules for EU domain names are perfectly clear. If you want to leave the EU, well, it sucks to be you - do your homework.
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Why post as anonymous coward, seeing that the site no longer allows anonymous posts?
Is it so you can be ill mannered?
Re:Petty Retribution (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Petty Retribution (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not sure what you mean. There never was any doubt that UK based eu domains owned by UK citizens would not be valid. The article you linked to has the clarification that UK based but EU citizen owned (so not Brits), which was sort of the grey area, will still be fine.
Re:Petty Retribution (Score:5, Insightful)
Because some TLDs choose not to care about their rules, or have very broad rules, doesn't mean other TLDs also have to ignore their own rules. .com is very lax and there are no rules. .gov is very strict and yes the rules are enforced. .eu can do be as lax or strict as they choose in enforcing their rules.
Re: Petty Retribution (Score:2)
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Because some TLDs choose not to care about their rules, or have very broad rules, doesn't mean other TLDs also have to ignore their own rules. .com is very lax and there are no rules. .gov is very strict and yes the rules are enforced. .eu can do be as lax or strict as they choose in enforcing their rules.
I think Brits thought there would be no changes after leaving the EU. We know that around 81 thousand did.
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Domain names are boundaries of authority, not a directory. The reason UK entities cannot hold .eu domains is simply that the EU requires a .eu domain holder to be under EU jurisdiction. The UK has removed itself from the EU. The rules have not changed.
People choose domains by the names. That's like making the color your first priority when buying a car.. When choosing domains, pay attention to the rules you have to agree to.
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All of my cars are TARDIS blue.
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The odds increase significantly when you include the content of their post in your estimate.
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Spoken like a true moron who voted for Brexit not having any idea what it actually entailed. LOL!
Most didn't. I guess the idea wos to drive off that bridge when they got to it.
Re:Petty Retribution (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would British organizations be permitted to keep using .eu domains when the United Kingdom is no longer part of the EU? Leave means Leave, right? All of sudden it's "Leave, but y'know, we wanna keep some of those EU benefits."
If you're shocked by this, I'd suggest you send an email to Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, the people that brought you Brexit.
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Why would British organizations be permitted to use .nz domains but they are wiggle.co.nz is definitely British if you expect ending of the domain to indicate what the country the company is in you will be disappointed.
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there are no TLD's that tell you anything important other then what the buyer wanted to be associated with. I can go get a .com (commercial) .org ( non-profit), and .edu ( education) dll and point them all to the same site. No one checks. Why would they?
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Please get a .gov and point it at your site.
Re: Petty Retribution (Score:2)
People have. Some dude got his own .gov and a story was posted about it here.
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Re: Petty Retribution (Score:2)
Re: Petty Retribution (Score:2)
Why would British organizations be permitted to use .nz domains, but they are?
The domain wiggle.co.nz is definitely British.
If you expect the ending of a domain to indicate what the country the company is in, you will be disappointed.
Things simpler in the Commonwealth ... (Score:2)
Why would British organizations be permitted to use .nz domains
Because they have the same queen and she said so. ;-)
Re:Petty Retribution (Score:5, Insightful)
This is really a very small nuisance compared to things like the VAT tax alteration, which is causing companies all over the world to refuse to ship into the British market.
It's also quite reasonable. The purpose of TLDs was to allow specified groups to decide who was allowed to use them. The .eu domain was for the use of EU citizens and groups. The .uk domain was for the use of United Kingdom citizens and groups. Some places decided to sell the right to be listed in their domain. .tv is a good example.
It's notable that some of the domain controllers aren't being very careful about registration or use (one could consider the .org domain here), but that's no argument that other controllers shouldn't be.
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Different TLDs have different rules. If you knew anything about how TLDs work, you'd know that.
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It's all a bit storm in a teacup though. People have had four years to sort themselves out for this, even though the actual rule was flapping about it should still have been obvious and people should have made plans. I suspect the majority of them have and that there won't be any real interest or fuss in these "tens of thousands of domains". For those that really care, welcome to virtual Estonia [e-resident.gov.ee].
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Eligibility criteria according to 733/2002, Article 4(2)(b):
(i) undertaking having its registered office, central administration or principal place of business within the Community, or
(ii) organisation established within the Community without prejudice to the application of national law, or
(iii) natural person resident within the Community;
Revocation was first regulated in 874/2004, Article 20. Even back in 2004, the registry was empowered to revoke domains in case the holder does not fulfill the eligibilit
So you pay a fee for a "registered office" service (Score:2)
(i) undertaking having its registered office, central administration or principal place of business within the Community
Thank you. Here is where the service I mentioned elsewhere gets authorized.
.eu website from somewhere else in the world. If some legal thing needs your attention you service gets in touch. Its a solved problem, solved long long ago.
For those who missed the other post, you find an EU based service that will be the "registered office" for you. They are sort of like a mail drop, can sign receipts for legal notices, etc. You then go about and implement and run your
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Umm, no. .eu originated in 2005 and follows the basic rules of a .us domain. Please describe the rules for having a .us domain and how those rules established in 1985 were part of petty spite for the Brexit in 2016.
Your thinking of the Brexit in 1775.
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Re:Petty Retribution (Score:5, Informative)
Riiiight, that was the reason. 52% of you degenerates wanted out. Now you get what you've asked for. You can't cherry-pick which privileges to keep and which duties to get rid of you twat.
Viewing from the outside, it was quite obvious that "having their cake and eat it too" is exactly what Brexiters wanted when voting out.
Now watch when the terms of the Brexit deal was revealed, more screams of "retribution", "unfair punishment" coming out as UK loses more EU member privileges.
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Actually, that was about 33%. There were a load of abstains at the time, as it was initially presented as a "non legally binding" vote, and nobody had any idea what Brexit was, so couldn't say they wanted to vote to leave, without knowing what that looked like vs. remain.
Then there was a very significant amount of voters who simply voted leave, as that's what the UK Prime Minister of the time (David Cameron) didn't want (and the vote was under the general heading of "fuck the Tories"). There was a lot of
Re:Talk about petty... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Sung with mascara running down their faces as EU bureaucrats revel in their easily reversed petty decisions....
Re:Talk about petty... (Score:4, Informative)
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It was a rule we insisted on you fucking moron.
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There are a lot of TLDs with strict requirements. For example, I cannot get a .mil or .gov domain, and those have been there since the beginning.
Re:There are eligibility requirements? Why? (Score:5, Informative)
Try getting a .it (Italy) one without a presence in the country.
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EU rules mean they have to sell to any EU member. I bought one, as an EU member. They haven't yet noticed I'm not one any more.
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There are a *few* TLD's with requirements. The norm is that they do not. Governmental and Military TLD's are the obvious ones that are controlled by Government and the Military - not domain registrars accessible to everyone.
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Why in the world have we allowed TLDs to impose any other requirements?
To each their own. Tuvalu is fine selling .TV to anyone. The EU is free to keep its .EU for its citizens. .EU rules? Don't get a .EU domain.
Don't like the
What's wrong with .COM anyways?
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What's wrong with .COM anyways?
Because f%&k.com is taken, and I can't get anyone in Italy to sponsor f%&k.it.
.Com.
Harris' Lament: All The Good Ones Are Taken. That's why Not
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It wasn't applied retrospectively. That was what the law and rules were all the time. What changed is that Britain is no longer a part of the EU. And there are still plenty of ways around that problem if you're a company, and, probably, even for an individual.
There are other problems that are going to be less easy to solve.
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Not really against .eu having those restrictions, but there is no need apply them retrospectively to people who bought the domain in good faith within the rules of that time.
What does "retrospectively" mean to you, exactly?
The ccTLD was placed in the root name servers in May 2005, and registrations opened in December 2005.
The rules on eligibility were published in March of 2005, a whole 9 months before it was even possible to register in the ccTLD, and 2 months before the ccTLD existed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.eu [wikipedia.org]
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I bought one in good faith when they first opened the TLD. That's when I was a member of the EU. I vaguely knew that you needed EU membership, because the signup checked on it. I was fine with that.
I'm sad to see mine vanish into the ether, but there again, that's the law I bought under, thus the understanding and the contract. The country I reside in has decided to make a move that voids that contract, so there it is. It's sad, but that's the world. Sometimes sad happens.
My personal hosts now reside
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Spain required nothing, the US required only an "interest in the US" such as making data or products available to USians. Anyone can register a .UK as well.
That’s not the rules for .us domains [godaddy.com]:
I read nowhere that "an interest" is enough to apply for a .us domain. There are more stringent requirements than that.
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I read nowhere that "an interest" is enough to apply for a .us domain. There are more stringent requirements than that.
Barely. "An entity or organization" mean you sign up with some LLC that is essentially a mail drop that is authorized to accept legal notices on your behalf.
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Not from the EU or the UK, but this is a perfectly fine move. You don't want to follow EU rules? Register your domain with another TLD. There are hundreds to choose from.
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didn't they have the last 4 years to prepare for this move?
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Not necessarily. That's true in the US, because we set the system up that way. Other places set things up differently. I suppose large businesses prefer .com names, but those names have lots of clashes, with different groups wanting the same name.
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I don't really see how Brexit is giving power to citizens. It's giving power to a select few in the higher echelons in a somewhat more localized government, but the citizens are gonna be just as powerless as they've always been.
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It's giving power to a select few
Are these not citizens?! I have to ask, because I do wonder if the EU nationalists are really this blind. How do you not see that a government is formed by citizens?!
People everywhere tend to think of their countries' politicians often as "corrupt liars, who will go back on their words at any moment", but when it comes to the EU parliament and commissions are these viewed often as godly in their doing as judges and surgeons. Why is this?
The scary part is when one then looks back at the past did many Germans
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Wait so we advocate for and vote for rules barring non EU citizens from having eu domains. Then leave the EU, but somehow it's their faulty for sticking to rules we insisted on? Are you a false flag operation trying to prove all the EU haters are raging morons?