Within what appears to be the last week, a new site has gone up to dedicated to the proposed change by Nominet,  the organization  that runs the .uk ccTLD, to start selling domain names ending in just .UK rather than .co.uk or .net.uk.

This is what the site, That.co.uk decribes about itself:

“This site is here to make people aware of some drastic changes that are being proposed to the UK Internet. Nominet are proposing making changes that in our opinion will hurt both business and public confidence when using sites that end in .uk”

“We feel that there is an unfortunate need for this site because Nominet have been selective in what they have told the public about this proposal. In fact the proposal in the short press release has no information relating to the fact that current websites on the .co.uk (UK Business extension) will have no special rights which will enable them to move to the new business extension (.UK). It has also been very selective in other areas of information.”

“The changes will see cyber squatters and brand squatters moving in and hijacking legitimate .co.uk website owners brands. Anyone who currently has a.co.uk website may need to pay huge amounts to keep their presence with a .uk starts.”

“Nominet claim that the.uk will run alongside the co.uk and will not become a rival to it. This is disingenuous in the extreme in our opinion. There is no doubt amongst independent Internet professionals we have spoken to that the .UK will be the preferred United Kingdom Internet extension within a number of years.”

“We estimate that Nominet could stand to make £200-£300 million from UK businesses slugging it out in an auction environment. ”

“Nominet will them pocket the proceeds that in our opinion will have been legally forced from UK business into nothing more than brand protection. ”

“We also have concerns that Nominet have not engaged with the public about these changes. To our knowledge it has not emailed the owners of  current .co.uk, .org.uk, .me.uk etc and informed them about the changes for their views, despite having all the emails on record. Unfortunately it doesn’t appear to have asked these people for their opinion. Therefore we feel it has failed in its duty to the UK public in making them aware of what is in their own words “significant changes”.

This site is about highlighting some of the inaccuracies that relate to security measures on .uk to justify an enormous 800% increase in price just for running a domain name in the UK. We welcome the support of UK business in fighting these changes that have suspicion of revenue raising by a company that has a monopoly over the UK Internet.”

For anyone who currently owns a.uk domain name I think you keep a close eye on this issue and check out that.co.uk