Having suspended discussions on the .uk debate back in February, it seems Nominet have taken the feedback on board and while they are pressing on with the .uk extension, there are some crucial changes to the detail.
The major change (from our point of view at least) is that owners of the existing .uk domains will be given first refusal. In the event that there are two existing .uk domains (such as a .co.uk and a .org.uk), then the one that has been registered for longer will have the first right of refusal. This is all a big improvement on the initial plans but one issue still remains for established businesses; there is no mention of a website needing to be active on the domain. Consequently, it seems a legitimate business (such as ours) could still lose out to another party if that other party registered, for example, the org.uk first, regardless of whether or not the latter domain was dormant.
Fortunately I’ve just looked into it and we registered ours first :). Worth checking though.
Dan
