dot UK

Last month, several new web domain extensions became available.  One of these was .uk (until now, you could have .co.uk, .org.uk, etc., but not just .uk on its own).  I decided that I would try to get a more professional domain for this blog, chose 'russell.uk', and tried to pay.  After all, I thought, if I ever set up an eponymous business, the £4.55 investment would surely seem worthwhile!

I was soon to be disappointed, however.  Until 2019, you can only buy one of the new domains if you already own the .co.uk, .org.uk, or similar.  The same kind of rules also apply to other new domains, such as  dot london.

I'm not a fan of these restrictions, but it seems that there are two issues at play which should guide our decision about whether they are justifiable.  Given that these new domains were released because so many of the old ones were taken, which of the following is the more important?

1. The right of the owners of the existing domains not to lose traffic to recent upstarts
2. Giving the said upstarts the opportunity to compete for web traffic.

Interestingly, given my own career choices, russell.co.uk is the domain of a business which sells services to actuaries.  There certainly is a non-zero probability that I might one day want to use russell.uk for something not totally unrelated.  What is more important: my opportunity to do that, or their right to spend the next 5 years deciding whether to stop me?

It feels in many ways that the generation who are now middle-aged took all of the good domain names for a steal, used them to fuel the expansion of their businesses, and then pulled up the ladder behind them.  We can have the same opportunities, but only for a lot more money.  It reminds me of the student fees debate!