> The Commission's announcement was met with severe criticism with .eu website owners claiming that revoking existing domains went against the right to property.
which if this
> 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.
is "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" then it seems to me that this revocation is somewhat premature. It could be argued, that these domains were allocated in accordance with the law and just because the status of the owner has changed, that does not require Eurid to deallocate them, which would expose them to legal repercussions if they simply chose to do that.
also, those owners could still be second passport holders and therefore EU citizens (regardless of their residence). So it's somewhat premature to simply assume that because they currently reside in the UK they're not eligible anymore, or am I missing something here?
That’s not typically how it works. Normally, if you fail to prove eligibility, there’s a grace period during which your registrar waits for proof that’s considered acceptable by the registry. I’m not saying that’s what happened here, but that’s what usually happens. You may not be able to use the domain during all or part of that grace period, but you don’t actually lose ownership of the domain until that grace period lapses.
No you are not missing anything. I am an EU citizen residing in the UK, but I was and still am Austrian by nationality and only hold an Austrian citizenship. Luckily I never fancied a .eu domain, but if the EU would have prematurely revoked my domain then I'd be very unhappy. I find the EU mostly very incompetent. Great ideas, but terrible execution on literally every matter.
EDIT:
I'm being downvoted because I have an honest opinion which isn't nationalistic. That's quite funny. I don't see myself as any particular nationality. I don't see myself as having a strong allegiance towards the EU, Austria, the UK or Poland (my cultural heritage). If the EU sucks at something (and unfortunately they do that a lot) then I'm not afraid to point it out. Patting people on the back and pretending that they are awesome when they actually suck isn't going to help anyone. Sometimes it's best to be brutally honest, especially if it's people who are unelected and the only way to show discontent is through voice and not ballot.
A bold statement. And then you proceed to speculate with:
> "Luckily I never fancied a .eu domain, but if the EU would have prematurely revoked my domain then I'd be very unhappy."
So you don't know if they are missing anything or not. You didn't prove it, but you sure have an opinion about it and the EU, which doesn't add to discussion. Which is why you're being downvoted.
They cancelled .eu domains for all registrants who reside in the UK, irrespective of their citizenship. That is not a speculation. They ask for those people to prove their citizenship before the end of March. Why doesn't the EU first ask for the citizenship proof before harming its own citizen? It's kind of dumb to think that the EU happily harms its own citizen and don't even realise it because they think the only harm UK folks.
"Registration data may be updated by indicating a legally established entity in one of the eligible Union Member States, or by updating their residence to a Union Member State, or proving their citizenship of a Union Member State irrespective of their residence."
So, again, you just come off salty, ignorant and prejudiced towards EU without merit, and there isn't room on Hackernews for such attitude. So yeah, you do deserve to get downvoted into oblivion.
Yes I went to the eurid website and they had a facility to declare citizenship beforehand so you’re right, I simply assumed massive EU incompetence based on precedence, but in this case it wasn’t their fault.
>They cancelled .eu domains for all registrants who reside in the UK, irrespective of their citizenship.
No, they didn't. Eurid have sent out several notifications telling registrants what to do if they are still eligible to have a .eu domain by virtue of the fact they are EU citizens.
Source: I have (well, had...) a .eu domain and read those emails.
The rules of .eu domain ownership were known in advance, and there was many years of advance notice and one year of transition rules. If domain owners didn't take action on that long transition period I'd say the incompetence lies with them.
As per the article:
> 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.
So they still have a grace period in addition to the previous transition year, in addition to the time after triggering Art. 50
This is pure speculation. Let me counter with the equivivalent counter argument: More likely that domain holders were given time (about 12 months) to validate their eligibility.
To me, it has to be "being presently allocated". Otherwise, any reseller based in the EU could act as middleman and make .eu available for any entity in the world by transferring the rights after registration, which goes obviously against the intent of the rule.
There are brokers of .eu domains that allow you to get a .eu address for the purpose. Of course it's a service and subscription, but it's trivial for anyone to get a .eu domain.
Imagine also if you had a domain run by multiple people. Only for the one its registered under to be a UK citizen. You get de-platformed and were given little to no warning to switch the registrant.
Warnings were sent in October, with reminders in December. Afaik, domain owners who’ve had their domains suspended can validate their eligibility again. So I think it is possible to transfer ownership of the domain to someone (or an entity) that is eligible.
Emails (from GoDaddy) seem to have been sent to registrars as early as August 2018 [0]
This all said, I feel this is a massive non-issue. The EU announced their plan to do this very early on, and while I thought it was a bad idea for similar "property" reasons as you've mentioned, webmasters have had what? 3.5 years to change their URLs? We saw this with GDPR, and the bottom line just seems like its always going to be the Six Ps: Proper Planning Prevents Piss-Poor Performance.
The point was that "Leave EU" - a group dedicated to leaving the EU and removing the rights of UK people to register a .eu domain - has itself got an eu domain which is unaffected by the leave process because it's registered via an EU company.
Perhaps "hypocritically" rather than "ironically" may have been more accurate, but certainly would have been more political.
To be honest I can't think of any other .eu domains other than leave.eu.
Leave.EU Group Limited trading as Leave.EU.
A company registered in England & Wales. Company
Registration Number 9763501 Registered office:
2430/2440, The Quadrant, Aztec West, Almondsbury,
Bristol. BS32 4AQ
Edit: EURid says it’s registered to “BETTER FOR THE COUNTRY DIGITAL MARKETING SERVICES DESIGNATED ACTIVITY COMPANY” in Waterford, IE
A couple of years ago I moved everything over to my brother who resides in Dublin just in case I lost my long standing domains. It seems I could in theory update this back to my home address in Northern Ireland given this: https://blacknight.blog/brexit-and-eu-domains-again.html - does anyone know if that's actually the case? I found the potential loss of yet another part of my EU identity thanks to Brexit a real kick in the teeth :(
Edit: I guess as I hold an Irish passport I'm entitled to own an EU domain. Though I remember messaging EurID at the time (https://twitter.com/EUregistry/status/1086252921380065285) and they didn't seem to know for sure - but that linked page now says a Union citizen, independently of their place of residence - so that probably covers me. I feel for any UK only citizen losing theirs :/
Sad bookends to a poorly thought out process. The trade deal with the EU was also kind of sad because it revolved around "territorial waters" for Fishing which is < 1% of the economy, while saying nothing of Services Sector and of course Immigration Control.
The biggest challenge for the liberal politics in the coming decade is how to get ordinary people to weigh long term risks more intentionally, while not alienating them because of bad/heavy handed governance.
That is how it appeared to me. Like Vultures fighting over bare bones. It would have been better if they had a agreed a 10 year moratorium on fishing in EU and UK water to let fish stocks recover.
If you consider that the UK got an agreement on goods where we have a deficit but not one on services where we have a surplus then it doesn't look like a good outcome.
There's no deal on services because there's no single market in services for there to be a deal about.
One of the sad truths about the EU, and one reason the UK has left, is that the much vaunted "single market" was always first and foremost designed for the purposes of France and Germany. Their economies are more goods export oriented. Once goods rules were made uniform (always to the benefit of those two), the EU mysteriously lost interest in creating a single market for services. There has been very little progress for a long time in even basic things like mutual recognition.
Do you have anything more concrete than the usual "France/Germany decide everything"? UK got loads of exceptions to the standard EU rules. UK also was able to influence the EU heavily. UK also pushed for expanding the EU greatly this so the UK had a source for cheap labour. This conflicts with your view quite a bit.
Yeah yeah, the UK influenced the EU so heavily it ended up choosing to leave.
I've already explained one way in which the EU is basically oriented towards the needs of France and Germany - the single market for services never really happened. It was promised and that promise was never fulfilled. Why? Because Germany and France don't export many services.
Even selling of goods and services online only started to be paid attention in 2015, decades after the single market for goods, and the EU has mostly made things worse for online sellers via things like its VAT rules, which are horrifically complex to implement. Basically you can't do it because it's so complex, so you have to get a dedicated third party company to process the VAT stuff for you, which imposes costs on everyone.
Meanwhile the only thing that came out of their supposed digital services market strategy was a highly controversial change to copyright law, the product of vast amounts of lobbying. In Germany it was so controversial it even led to a bomb threat!
Things that could actually make it easier to sell the sorts of services that the UK is strong in never even made it to the table. Instead there is a very vague set of general statements in the treaties that don't mean anything, leading to lots of very silly court cases, like when someone selling a laser tag game in Germany bought laser guns from the UK and residents took them to the EU courts, arguing that "human dignity" meant that this service should be restricted. And the courts agreed.
Really, who has time for this kind of stuff? The EU has time to standardise banana straightness (read my other post) and kettle power levels, but the basics of "can I open an entertainment business in another country without being shut down by bizarre legal arguments" isn't there.
I mean, "Brexit means Brexit", no? The ToS for .eu domains is not that clear about the fact that these are not to be considered property but there is an important point:
> SECTION 9. RIGHTS GRANTED
> 1. Upon registration of a Domain Name, the Registrant obtains a limited, transferable, renewable, exclusive right to use the Domain Name for the Term unless otherwise stated in the Rules. No other rights can be claimed by the Registrant except for those included herein.
The key point here is: limited. This should indicate that a domain name is not property. On top of that UK .eu domain owners had 2 years time to figure things out.
This whole article read like a big complaint about not doing long ago announced homework.
1. Changing your domain name isn't easy. You can easily lose PageRank, email addresses stop working, OAuth has to be reconfigured, it may lead to downtime, etc.
2. The .eu domain is practically deserted. Nobody cares about it. There's no real benefit to freeing up names in this TLD.
Together, we see that this is a classic EU move - interpret the rules in whatever way is most spiteful towards anyone who doesn't play ball. They could have very easily decided that the eligibility matters at allocation time, and simply continued to allow pre-existing holders to use their domains. Or they could have steadily increased the prices to ease people out on their own pace. Or many other things. Instead they yank all of them simultaneously with no recourse: the worst possible outcome for everyone.
Honestly though, I wonder what people who registered .eu domains were thinking. There's no real benefit to having one and the true nature of the EU Commission is not really a secret, albeit it's not covered by American media. If you willingly submit yourself to the Commission when you don't have to, you're almost signing up for some kind of abuse.
Brexit is coming, and it brings changes to .eu domains like (mydomain).eu
"Now that the UK has voted to withdraw from the European Union, the registry for .eu domains (EURid) has decided to revoke domains registered to UK residents, and prevent them from purchasing new ones.
In light of this decision we will no longer offer .eu domains to UK residents. EURid may act as early as March 30, 2019, but the deadline might shift as Brexit negotiations continue.
You still have options, though. You can either update your registrant address to one outside the UK, or replace your .eu domains with another option."
"In 2016, the United Kingdom voted to withdraw from the European Union. Soon new .eu registrations will be restricted to any natural person, company or organization residing in or established in the European Union, Iceland, Liechtenstein or Norway. This means that customers in the UK will no longer be able to register new .eu domains. Plus, .eu domains that are currently registered to UK addresses will be revoked.
These changes may take effect as early as March 30, 2019, but the deadline could shift as Brexit negotiations continue.
In light of these new policies, we're no longer offering .eu domains to UK residents. We also urge UK residents with .eu domains to consider their options: either update your registrant information to an .eu-compliant address or replace any .eu domains with other available options. "
> On 1 October 2020, EURid has notified by email all UK registrants and their registrars that they will lose their eligibility as of 1 January 2021 unless they demonstrate their compliance with the .eu regulatory framework by updating their registration data before 31 December 2020. They could do so by indicating a legally established entity in one of the eligible Union Member States, or updating their residence to a Union Member State, or proving their citizenship of a Union Member State irrespective of their residence.
Brexit feels like the Comedy Roast of William Shatner.
It's supposed to be somewhat light-hearted, but Takei clearly had beef and he did not care if this was being recorded. Wait you guys didn't all like me the whole time?
And that's why you don't use ccTLDs. Looking at you, everyone still using a .io TLD -- you never know what trouble might be lurking in the pipeline there.
I can see it now... some companies providing a service where you can have an EU address to register a domain from the UK. These services already exist for other things.
This is unbelievably petty and spiteful. The least they could do is grandfather in existing registrants and only enforce these requirements on transfer.
I don't suppose many of their EU registrants realise they'd have to forfeit their domains if they ever decided to emigrate.
you won't forfeit the domain if you are a EU citizen no matter where you emigrate.
The domains are for residents on the EU or EU citizens. That were the rules when people registered them. As UK left the block and are not EU citizens, it's not spiteful nor petty, just the rules they accepted when they decided to register the domains
You will if you take up citizenship in a country which doesn't allow dual nationality, or, more commonly, you will if you're an EU resident who doesn't have EU citizenship.
It's a bad enough rule to apply to individuals, but to apply it on mass to people, probably most of whom didn't actually want to leave, of course is petty and spiteful. You can be on either side of the Brexit debate and see that. Where's the good will?
Ignorantia iuris nocet. Yes, I don't think many read the T&Cc of .eu domains, but that doesn't mean the EURid is doing something spiteful here – they actually follow their own T&Cs on that.
I imagine it is a question of applicable law. If the EU is not in a position to regulate the people in charge of those domains, I can understand why they would not want to give the impression that they are "EU" domains.
Shortly after the Brexit vote came back to leave I started the process of moving away from the EU domain we utilised. We spent about 2 years transitioning until almost all traffic was to the replacement and haven't used an EU domain since 2018. Most people only got told in 2018 that they would almost certainly loose them unless negotiations determined otherwise but I just thought it wasn't worth the risk.
When the new registrations begin (Jan 2022), hopefully the former owners moved off of them completely, before an attacker registers them, points the MX records, leading to mailbox collection and password resets. Without ownership, it might be hard to change other systems (DNS-based verification).
Can anyone suggest a domain provider who offers good emergency support? (e.g. they pick up the phone).
My current provider only does daytime email support. Combined with a 9hr timezone difference, this has meant trying to fix this .eu domain issue has now reached day 5.
I want to ask what happens to those who are still getting under graduate degrees in UK who are originally from EU. Will they find it easier to get job in EU or will they be leaving UK?
Ouch. I do have certain level of disdain for bureaucractic power and this appears to be a good reminder as to why. Then again, the sentiment in EU may be to punish Brexit by any means necessary.
The problem isnt Brexit, it's how the EU handles it. There's literally no reason to suspend those domains, just block them from extending it and creating new ones. Everyone happy. but.. nope... Let's just force shutdown these websites, just so we can tell other countries, see, this is what happens when u leave the EU. The EU is so pathetic.
A big part of the justification for Brexit is because the EU is a crap bureaucracy that does arbitrary, self-harming and utterly unnecessary stuff like this all the time. It's totally in character for them to do this, which simply indicates why Brexit is a good idea.
> A big part of the justification for Brexit is because the EU is a crap bureaucracy that does arbitrary, self-harming and utterly unnecessary stuff like this all the time.
I haven't seen anything of the sort as a reason for brexit. I have seen loads of broken promises that were made around the referendum. Plus the longstanding tradion (for loads of EU countries) to blame everything on the EU. Combined with UK media making stuff up about the EU (bendy bananas). There's been so much misinformation (lies) that the EU has a 10+ page list of incorrect UK "news"articles. I've also seen a lot of misinformation regarding foreigners, whereby any foreigner is put into the "asylum seeker" group. There's even some cartoons about that; that they a) take all the jobs b) never pay taxes (despite taking all the jobs) c) do not work
>Combined with UK media making stuff up about the EU (bendy bananas).
Not just the media but the Prime Minister himself. He even gave a speech where he admitted to making up a story about the EU wanting to ban prawn cocktail crisps.
Of course, he did also get fired from his job as a journalist for blatantly lying.
But where have you looked? To pick just one example, Brexit the Movie talked about the low quality of EU bureaucracy quite a bit.
The EU's old list of "myths" is a bit of a joke BTW. A lot of the so-called myth debunkings started with an admission that the claim is indeed true, but here's why it's actually OK. It's more a list of responses than myths. For instance the "myth" that they were funding trapeze artists in Africa was explained with words to the effect of, yes we do this, but it's totally cool so what's the problem? I've noticed hardly anyone who quotes the existence of that site seems to have actually read any of it. I think they took it down at some point - it was as embarrassing to the EU as the British press, really. Kind of a hall of shame of stupid stuff the press had picked up on over the years combined with a very weak set of justifications, often of the form of "we decided to do this so that makes it right".
Bendy bananas is a good example of that by the way. You claim the press made it up. You're lying, perhaps without realising it. Commission regulation 2257/94 specifies different classes for fruit based on, amongst other things, straightness. Read about it here:
This is supposedly to make trade easier. Perhaps it does, although why the EU needs to define this vs just supermarkets and other bulk purchasers who care about banana straightness is very unclear. The debate about bendy bananas was never about whether the rules existed at all, but rather whether they represented a reasonable deployment of trans-national bureaucracy.
Your post is symptomatic of a more general problem: people who are very pro EU tend to believe they are better informed than they actually are, and tend to believe people who disagree with them about the value of the EU are just brainwashed idiots who don't know the facts. But when this has been tested rigorously e.g. in polls or studies, it's always been that anti-EU people have a (slightly) better grip on the facts.
The ccTLDs are maintained by the respective entities that own them. This has nothing to do with Internet being supranational, the DNS simply does not reflect that. In fact, it had been controlled via ICANN by the US for the longest time:
https://newrepublic.com/article/117037/us-gives-iana-and-dns...
Blocking renewals has the same ultimate result, just with added steps and a less clean process (because right now everyone whose domain has been suspended is FORCED to resolve it within the next 3 months, which is preferable to domains just randomly vanishing over the upcoming years as they expire).
> The Commission's announcement was met with severe criticism with .eu website owners claiming that revoking existing domains went against the right to property.
which if this
> 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.
is "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" then it seems to me that this revocation is somewhat premature. It could be argued, that these domains were allocated in accordance with the law and just because the status of the owner has changed, that does not require Eurid to deallocate them, which would expose them to legal repercussions if they simply chose to do that.