Nominet

Nominet UK is the .uk domain name registry in the United Kingdom, which was founded by Dr Willie Black and five others on 14 May 1996 when its predecessor, the "Naming Committee" was unable to deal with the volume of registrations then being sought under the .uk domain. Nominet is a non-profit company limited by guarantee. It has members who act as shareholders, but without the right to participate in the profits of the company. Anyone can become a member, but most members are internet service providers who are also registrars. As one of the first professional ccTLD operators, Nominet became the model for many other operators worldwide.

Unlike the model for gTLDs and ccTLDs in some other countries, by and large, customers wishing to register a domain do not approach Nominet directly, but register the domain via a registrar. This is an organisation that is authorised by Nominet to register and update domains on behalf of customers, and that has provided a PGP public key to enable Nominet to authenticate communications from them. Registrars were formerly known as "tagholders".

As of March 2012, the .uk register held 10,000,000 .uk domain names making it the second largest ccTLD in the world. Nominet also deals with disputes about registrations of .uk domain names, via its Dispute Resolution Service (DRS)which is similar to the UDRP system used for generic Top Level Domain Names, but with certain innovations such as a free mediation service.

Nominet, which operates the .uk domain and is soon to start operating the UK ENUM registry, has launched a charitable foundation, the Nominet Trust. Nominet has been running up a surplus (profit) on its ordinary operations since 2003; since its constitution forbids it from distributing surplus funds to members in the manner of a commercial company paying dividends, it is now looking at charitable activities as a means of running down the money mountain.

In September 2008, Nominet's board made an initial donation of £5m to its charitable offshoot, which will support "education, research and the funding of suitable projects for the benefit of UK Internet stakeholders". Further donations have been made since this date.

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