> 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.
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.
> 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.
Regrettably, this is true of most rules.
> 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.
People had lives and businesses that were contingent on a great many things that were lost to Brexit.
It seems like maybe you think of the TLD problem as a special case because it affected you so directly and significantly and is within your area of expertise. (I don't mean this as a criticism, it's completely normal and I've no doubt I would do the same.) But really I don't think it's particularly different from all of the other administrative problems that Brexit created.
If I look at the differences between what cite as precedent and the UK/EU situation it's that the EU continues functioning whereas Yugoslavia and Soviet Union did not.
Maybe more impetuous to protect EU institutions from impersonation? Not sure.
> But when it comes to internet's DNS system, people have lives and businesses
Seriously?
People had lives and businesses reliant on the UK being a member of the EU — there were hundreds of stories of people who were spending lots of time in the EU caring for relatives, or running their business, but not enough time to claim residence in the EU.
That all got thrown under the bus by the Tories, the domain names is a minor detail in comparison.
(Note the .yu domain was removed in 2010 after a 3 year transition period, but for some reason .su remains.)
At least .yu was completely terminated. Wheras the confiscated .eu domains are now being re-listed for anyone to register! Anyone can now claim my old email address and I can do nothing to stop it. This is what bugs me the most about the whole thing.
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.