Talk:.eu

Comment
I've removed a few paragraphs added in this edit - they seem like someone's personal views to me. Perhaps some of the points can be re-added in, but it needs a lot more thought. sjorford (talk)  11:31, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Category?
Does anyone know if Wikipedia maintains a catgeory of websites by TLD, or a list of same? I'm keeping my eye on a few .eu articles, and thought it might make sense to toss in some kind of category. samwaltz 00:39, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Well there are is a large number of websites (tens of millions) and the nearest thing to a categorisation of the web is Dmoz's architecture. Even on .eu, the number of active websites is quite low. (I've forensically reconstructed most (75%+) of .eu domains and approximately 25% of the active websites point to just 15 IPs - most of them are "coming soon" parking IPs and the others are domain warehousing operations.) A lot of the web is like this so one of the biggest single categories would be "parking/coming soon" pages. In terms of active domains, based on work in did in mapping every website in com/net/org/biz/info/ie a while ago, approximately 70% of the domains in the TLDs are active (the other 30% being dead). --Jmccormac 12:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)


 * True enough. There are a lot of parking sites out there; however, I was moreso wondering about .eu websites which already have Wikipedia entries, not a complete catalogue of all .eu websites. You can't toss a category tag onto something which doesn't have a wikipedia article, right? :) samwaltz 12:46, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Force of habit - I think globally. :) I'm not sure that there are that many .eu sites in Wikipedia at the moment. Most of the new .eu sites I've seen are blog type sites or Joomla minisites (such as those in .info to monetise domains). I haven't seen any large pureplay .eu websites yet and for the UK and Ireland, it is very much a backwater domain. Many of the UK registered .eu domains have been registered by front companies operated by non-EU businesses, typically in the US and Canada. The .eu count for Ireland is around 30K but I've only detected about 6K on Irish hosters. Significantly, one major domain warehousing company has used an Irish front company to register .eu domains. It might end up being a very limited category. :) --Jmccormac 16:08, 21 December 2006 (UTC)

Confusion!?!?
How come ".eu" is classed as a ccTLD, yet ".asia" is classed as a gTLD?


 * It is considered a ccTLD by the IANA, while .asia is a gTLD . Also EU is in ISO 3166-1 alpha-2. --193.77.238.223 15:54, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Asia is a continent, .EU is for the European Union, not for Europe as a continent.

The European Union is a group of countries though, not JUST one. So that argument is out the window. How about on the main template a section for regional TLDs? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 172.200.87.22 (talk) 07:03, 14 October 2007 (UTC)


 * It's an interesting idea, although since their are only two of them I'm not sure its necessary. I just added the Generic Top-level Domain template to the page as well, since .eu is mentioned on it as well, along side .asia. Hopefully this will clear up some confusion...--RAult 08:02, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It is still a ccTLD but it has the characteristics of a gTLD. Adding a gTLD template adds to the confusion. If there was a regional TLD template (rTLD), then it might be ok but .eu is just a ccTLD.--Jmccormac 08:35, 19 October 2007 (UTC)
 * It was a cock-up, not a conspiracy. At the time when first proposed, ICANN was resistant to creating any more gTLDs (then the orginal .com, .net, .org, .gov, .mil, .int) because it "might break the internet".  The only way to break the deadlock was for the EU to have a ccTLD, despite the fact that it is not a country (or a federation or a confederation for that matter).  With the addition of lots more gTLDs, is there any practical difference between a gTLD and a ccTLD any more (other than that ICANN doesn't control the ccTLDs)? --Red King (talk) 13:22, 19 January 2008 (UTC)

.eu Usage - Real Statistics
These are the preliminary results of an .eu mapping project last month I've been working on in the last month. Out of approximately 1.77M resolving domains (from 2.15M tracked) there are approximately 1.436M websites. The current stats for these websites are:

A: Active/not yet classified. B: Brand protection registration. D: refresh in webpage. F: Forbidden or other 4nn code. H: Holding page with no content. N: Duplicate content network of sites. P: PPC parked. R: Redirected (301/302 codes). S: Site is for sale. U: Site unavailable 127.0.0.1 is not a valid IP etc. W: Domain aggregation network sites. X: Porn sites.

I still haven't finished working on the stats. The Active websites figure is continually being downgraded as I clean the index. It would not be unthinkable to see a figure closer to 10% for the number of active .eu websites. The usage of .eu is a disaster. The domain industry regards it as a joke domain run by a bunch of jerks. It could have been a domain for Europe. Now it is just a domain that epitomises the incompetence, bureaucracy and waste. --Jmccormac 21:38, 4 July 2007 (UTC)


 * What's the equivalent info for .com? --Random832 (contribs) 02:49, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

MERGE from .eu.int
Looks like somebody added a merge tag last October, but didn't follow through. The .eu.int article is tiny, about the size that would make a good 'historical context' for this one. --Dynamicadam (talk) 19:39, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Support --Red King (talk) 13:15, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Support --sebastianlewis (talk) 05:22, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Don't merge. The domains are different, the historical context does not make them one or identical. --Purodha Blissenbach (talk) 19:12, 22 June 2008 (UTC)
 * .eu.int is no longer used, .int is a separate TLD. --sebastianlewis (talk) 05:22, 25 December 2008 (UTC)

Usage outside the EU
I know of at least one site that is outside the EU, but uses the .eu domain. It is a European site, but has nothing to do with Pan-Europeanism or anything, is quite local. --Mátyás (talk) 10:29, 26 March 2009 (UTC)

EU unfairly singling out Dotster
(Full disclosure: I'm a Doster employee) I'm concerned about the comment that there were long queues at Dotster. This seems to be unfairly singling out Dotster. Yes, there are sometimes delays. But can anyone prove that other registrars didn't long wait times too? DotsterCSR (talk) 02:50, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

ECB reverted from .eu to .int - a cockup or a conspiracy
I see that, at least of today, htt://www.ecb.eu has stopped working - but http://www.ecb.int still works. Is thi indicative of policy? cockup? conspiracy? (as usual, my money's on a cockup). --Red King (talk) 18:05, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * A dig @ns1.ecb.int shows a SERVFAIL for www.ecb.eu. Basically the nameserver for ecb.eu is not responding with the details for the www.ecb.eu site. The only nameserver listed for ecb.eu according to the Eurid WHOIS is ns.ecb.int. It was also showing a SERVFAIL error last month. The commonest explanation for this kind of error is that the zonefile on the nameserver is faulty or does not exist. I'm not sure if it is a policy decision. Jmccormac (talk) 20:12, 2 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Today i changed all ecb.eu weblinks because eurid has removed ecb.eu from its root nameservers for eu. according to its server log - although the domain is still registered by ecb. So ns1.ecb.int isn't the source of error because the query path stops at the second level. I don't know why this domain has been switched off. My bot also updates a template with exchanges rates at dewiki. This special ecb.eu-url isn't available for two weeks now. Merlissimo 01:05, 3 October 2009 (UTC)
 * Eurid did not remove ecb.eu from its zonefile. It is still there.

ecb.eu. 86400  IN      NS      ns1.ecb.int.
 * flags: qr rd; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
 * QUESTION SECTION:
 * ecb.eu.                               IN      NS
 * AUTHORITY SECTION:

This shows that the authoritative nameserver for ecb.eu is ns1.ecb.int. It is unusual to have a single nameserver for a domain but it is a classic example of a single point of failure.

The problem is on ns1.ecb.int and this is the nameserver that is not responding for the domain. This is why there is a SERVFAIL error. If the domain was not in the .eu zone then the result from the Eurid nameservers would be NXDOMAIN for no domain (status: NXDOMAIN). Jmccormac (talk) 01:28, 3 October 2009 (UTC)

123Reg .eu sale
Anyone reckon we should mention the 123Reg's .eu sale, selling limited .eu domains for £0.97pa. The drunken guy (talk) 19:17, 11 November 2009 (UTC)
 * No. It would be advertising. Jmccormac (talk) 20:24, 11 November 2009 (UTC)

Dead link
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.eurid.eu/images/Documents/Press_releases/march%2021%20-05%20icann%20apporves%20eurid%20agreement.pdf
 * In .eu on 2011-05-20 21:42:21, 404 Not Found
 * In .eu on 2011-05-31 13:22:05, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 13:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 2
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.eurid.eu/images/Documents/Press_releases/may%202-05%20.eu%20in%20the%20root.pdf
 * In .eu on 2011-05-20 21:42:20, 404 Not Found
 * In .eu on 2011-05-31 13:22:09, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 13:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 3
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.eurid.eu/content/view/104/52/lang,en/
 * In .eu on 2011-05-20 21:42:20, 404 Not Found
 * In .eu on 2011-05-31 13:22:18, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 13:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Dead link 4
During several automated bot runs the following external link was found to be unavailable. Please check if the link is in fact down and fix or remove it in that case!


 * http://www.pwc.com/Extweb/service.nsf/docid/748B2AEF93B857E280256FA2002A43A2/
 * In .eu on 2011-05-20 21:42:20, 404 Not Found
 * In .eu on 2011-05-31 13:22:28, 404 Not Found

--JeffGBot (talk) 13:22, 31 May 2011 (UTC)

Use in the EEA (European Economic Area)
"Regulation (EC) No 733/2002 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 22 April 2002 on the implementation of the .eu Top Level Domain1 is to be incorporated into the EEA Agreement. "

No information regarding this is to be found at EurID tho..... http://europalov.no/files/jcd/2013/eos-2013-085.pdf

Please see DECISION OF THE EEA JOINT COMMITTEE No 85/2013 http://europalov.no/files/jcd/2013/eos-2013-085.pdf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2001:700:1500:D120:28EB:B546:2456:CDC8 (talk) 11:33, 30 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The distribution of .eu domains seems to be largely EU based. Either this was superceded by some other regulation (it is a provisional text). There has been no word for Eurid on this yet and they generally take every opportunity to announce this kind of thing. It might be better to leave the article as EU only for the time being? Jmccormac (talk) 12:05, 30 May 2013 (UTC)

Brexit?
It's a minor thing, I know, but does anyone know what, if any, rules are in place for UK-based domain owners following the Brexit vote, particularly if the UK ends up outside the EEA? Tonywalton Talk 01:02, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * If UK gets an EEA agreement, Britons might be able to keep their .eu domains and get new. The previous Talk section discusses this. A google search on Norwegian language .eu domains finds some. If UK doesn't get an EEA agreement, they are unlikely to be able to new .eu domains, but might be grandfathered into keeping old domains. The reason for many to vote for Brexit was to abolish free movement for people from other EU countries, especially those with lower salaries, but I assume still keep free movement for Britons into some EU nice countries like Ireland, France, Spain etc. Then they wouldn't want an EEA agreement. In short, fairly unclear for now.--BIL (talk) 05:52, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * The situation as mentioned in the Eurid press release said that it had received no instructions from the European Commission on what to do next. It probably kicks off when Article 50 is activated. However The .eu would lose about 300K UK registrations and given its current state, it can't afford to lose that many in one go. It currently has about 3.8 million registered domains. German registrations have been declining as have Polish registrations. The growth in the Eastern EU countries doesn't seem to be significant in volume compared to the older EU countries. The other aspect of UK registered .eu domains is that many of them are not registered by UK residents but rahter by front companies owned by non-EU companies and individuals that would not otherwise qualify under the registration rules. There will probably be some diplomatic fudge that would enable UK registrants to keep their .eu domain names though the cyberwarehoused domains will be moved to different front companies in other EU countries. Jmccormac (talk) 06:42, 17 July 2016 (UTC)
 * EURID writes: As the next steps have still not been determined ..., note that no action will be taken against .eu or .ею domain names that have been registered by residents in UK. When further details are known about the timing and details of a UK exit, the European Commission will instruct EURid on how to proceed. --BIL (talk) 22:10, 17 July 2016 (UTC)

GoDaddy/EU conflict
I concerning the back and forth between GoDaddy and the Eu. saying this was an: "important historical aspect of the .eu land rush and sunrise phase..." It's all well and good that this was "important" but importance is not our standard for inclusion, notability is. The notability of this minor conflict on the origin of the TLD a dozen years ago is minimal at best. The majority of the text is sourced to GoDaddy's then-CEO's blog. The EU press release supposedly in response is no longer available and not retrievable through Wayback. The text indicates that the EU's response "had yet to be heard", even EU processes don't move that slowly. There are no new sources apparently available on searches. This is, on balance, an example of WP:RECENTISM that has lingered here as it the dispute was fresh in 2006 but no lasting significance has attached. It should be drastically trimmed. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:46, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It has been almost a week, no objection has been made and I am therefore restoring the previous excisions. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 18:27, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * I've reverted it. Eurid was effectively forced into taking action against the Ovidio group of registrars on the basis that the registrars were the registrants. Cyberwarehousing of this type was specifically prohibited by Eurid regulations. Godaddy's position and highlighting of the cyberwarehousing led directly to pressure on Eurid to act. The Eurid PR was initially claiming that nothing went wrong when in reality the whole thing was completely gamed. There were questions asked in the European Parliament about this and in August 2006, Eurid suspended approximately 74K domain names. There were legal cases after this and Eurid had to, initially, restore the domain names or pay a fine of approximately 25K Euro per day while they were suspended. Eurid appealed and continued the litigation. The secondary/resale market for .eu domain names had collapsed by then and the tens of thousands of domain names could not be resold for the price that the Ovidio group expected. In 2010, Ovidio et al paid 45K Euro to Eurid and the proceedings were terminated. (There's a mention of this in the 2013 annual Eurid report to the European Parliament. http://ec.europa.eu/transparency/regdoc/rep/1/2013/EN/1-2013-804-EN-F1-1.Pdf ). The same document also mentions the court case against Zheng, a cybersquatter with approximately 9,000 domain names being released for reregistration. It is unlikely that any of these proceedings would have happened if Eurid had not been shamed into acting on the cyberwarehousing problem by Godaddy. Godaddy is the largest domain name registrar on the web so it is not some random blogger who was making the allegations about Eurid's bungling of the launch. The article does need to be updated. Jmccormac (talk) 19:41, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * that's all fascinating technical/political minutiae, but you still haven't offered any sources to suggest that it was notable to anyone other than direct participants. Please provide such sources, if they exist. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 19:47, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The participants were the tens of thousands of EU businesses that applied for their .eu domain name only to see cyberwarehousers and cybersquatters get them. It effectively killed .eu as a competitor to .com in the European market. There should be some EU Parliament proceedings (questions from MEPs and response from the European Commissioners responsible) that establish the notability of the situation and there are multiple press citations from the time that also cite Godaddy/Parsons. This wasn't some random blogger posting about it but rather the CEO of the biggest domain name registrar. The Parsons/Godaddy intervention was important. I think that the Eurid report to the EU Parliament is quite a reliable source on this matter and details the termination with Ovidio paying 45K Euro to Eurid. It also details the relase of the 9,0000 cybersquatted Zheng domain names. Jmccormac (talk) 20:03, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * , I'm impressed by your obviously very detailed and specific knowledge of these events. That said, no, the EU report is not what I think is useful here. Did this make any impact on anyone's notice beyond either GoDaddy, the EU, or anyone else who had vested financial interests in the events?  I haven't been able to find any reliable sources of that.  Just to circle around back to the original point: semi-objective notability is what I'm asking about, not subjective importance.  Thanks. Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 20:08, 22 March 2018 (UTC)
 * It was covered in The Times (UK newspaper) ( https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cybersquatters-move-in-on-londoneu-x27p07bj685 ) and some other newspapers ( https://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/us-firms-accused-of-buying-up-european-cyberspace-410006.html ) at the time. The Times article is behind a paywall but the Independent article is not. This an article from an intellectual property law site:  http://www.cecileparkmedia.com/digital-business-lawyer/article_template.asp?Contents=Yes&from=eclp&ID=1103 It mentions that a British Liberal Party MEP asked brought the matter up in the European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee. The article also has a quote from Eurid's legal manager (Herman Sobrie) that the registrars were the registrants and that was against the regulations for the ccTLD. Jmccormac (talk) 20:25, 22 March 2018 (UTC)