Following a dispute, first reported in the
Register [4], .uk.co domain names disappearred in a puff of virtual smoke yesterday!
Thousands of domain owners have been left stranded with no cyber-prescence, including our communities most prominent .uk.co website,
Castle Technolgy Ltd [5].
Castle were also recently in the
news [6] following intimations that they had used
GPL open source code in
RISC OS [7] 5, which they denied by releasing a
statement [8].
The withdrawal of Castle's virtual drawbridge and of the domain suffix occurred after the University of Bogota, Columbia, the top-level domain owner and the registrar for the .uk.co domains, Net Registrar uk.co Ltd, failed to agree terms under a new arrangement - they are therefore 'no longer entitled to operate uk.co sub-domains'.
The 'new arrangements' were first discussed in June 2001 when the university announced that it was selling off the .co domain to the highest bidder. However, the Colombian government was not pleased with the move, so they decreed that from mid July last year, their Minister of Communications would take over the administration of the domain by the end of the year.
Whether the domains are ressurrected or not depends on the outcome of a decision by a Columbian judge due today.
More details at the Uk domains home page
www.uk.co [9]Note:
An update from the Register is available [10], essentially, the Columbian judge ruled in favour of the University - so .uk.co domains are not likely to return! An appeal is in the offing.