Posts by Tom Ward

Reducing prices?

"It has already reduced the pricing of domain names to resolve this problem."

The price of registering a domain name for two years - which forms the vast bulk of Nominet's income - has been constant at £5 since 1999.

http://www.nominet.org.uk/governance/scope/egmqanda/

Jonathan: the basic drift

Nominet calls itself a not-for-profit. However, in 2007 they made an operating "surplus" of £3.7m, up from £2.7m the previous year. Nominet also has in the region of £20m burning a hole in its pocket. See this year's report:

http://www.nominet.org.uk/digitalAssets/28154_Nominet_R_A_2007.pdf

Fox, Davies, et al believe that Nominet should reduce this "surplus" by reducing the cost of registering names.

The QC's advice notes that a distribution of existing funds wouldn't be possible under Nominet's current constitution. He says that Nominet would be able to run at a loss by reducing costs, but this would be risky if .uk fell out of favour. There is no comment on Nominet breaking even.

Although Nominet states that they aim to "Achieve long term income and expenditure neutrality" and "Achieve long term cash flow neutrality", they appear to want to achieve this by spending several million a year on their pet charity, rather than by reducing the cost to registrars: http://www.nominet.org.uk/governance/financialprinciples/

Fox has attempted to turn it into a for profit some years ago, but as far as I've read, he isn't trying to this time.

@Kerberos

Yep, that could work, but wouldn't it be better if that cash went to HM Treasury rather than a quango?