Direct registration under .uk will become possible

The .uk-registry (Nominet) has announced that they will start allowing direct registrations under .uk mid 2014. Now only registration under second levels like .co.uk and .org.uk are possible. As can be seen in our previous posts on this subject, there has been lots of discussion about this. During the two consultation rounds which where held by Nominet over the last year, many negative reactions where received, but Nominet still is going forward.

They did however implement a thorough protection for current holders of .co.uk and .org.uk domain names. If you own a .co.uk or .org.uk domain name registered before October 28’th 2013 then the corresponding .uk domain name will be reserved for you for the first 5 years. It will not be operational, but during that period you will be the only one able to claim it. If the same name is registered under both .co.uk and .org.uk then the reservation will be for the owner of the .co.uk domain name. So Nominet will actually be running a grandfathering period of 5 years.