UK domain registry Nominet has shelved plans for a shorter “.uk” country code domain, following a three-month consultation.
According to the organisation, most stakeholders welcomed the idea of cutting out second-level domains like “.co” or “.gov”, but couldn’t agree on how the registration should be implemented.
Nominet will return to this proposition in the future, and is currently accepting suggestions on how to make the domain name system work better.
Under the plan, organisations would pay a higher fee in return for being able to register domains using the second-level ‘xyz.uk’ rather than the current third-level ‘xyz.co.uk’.
There was also support for one of the added security features proposed, which was that .uk sites would all be DNSSEC-signed (Domain Name System Security Extensions), making them harder to hack.
However, the idea of a “trust mark” stamp to indicate the security of the site had been greeted with “scepticism” the group said.
A revised proposal will now be drawn up by the not-for-profit organisation.
It will focus on security measures, pricing and registration verification, in response to the feedback received.
“We are going to explore whether it is possible to present a revised proposal that meets the principles of increasing trust and security and maintaining the relevance of the .uk proposition in a changing landscape,” Nominet said in a statement.
“We would like to thank all those who took the time to give their views.”
