Thread by @mneylon

No @LeaveEUOfficial the Irish government didn't knock you offline and neither did @nealerichmond - the reason is probably way simpler: mj.ie/38Lp5ct

There seems to be quite a bit of confusion in the media about this story. @alexhern wrote about it last night for @guardian and repeated some weird inaccuracies which is unfortunate. First off the domain leave.eu is registered to a company not to a person

That's important. Legally there's a big difference between registering an asset to an individual (natural person) vs to a company (legal person).
In the case of .eu domains they can be registered to either BUT the public whois will clearly show this:
whois.eurid.eu/en/search/?dom…

Most of the media coverage seems to be fixated on the email address in the whois record. They don't appear to have looked at the actual domain name registrant OR the company data. Irish company data is 100% public so you can read it here core.cro.ie/e-commerce/com…

If you don't want to pay for the fillings or want to get "enriched" data there's a bunch of services like Vision-net that can help with that.

The email address in the public whois is hanging off bsg.ie
BSG is Business Services Group who do company formations + secretarial bsg.ie/company-format…

BSG's registered address in Waterford is the same as "BETTER FOR THE COUNTRY DIGITAL MARKETING SERVICES DESIGNATED ACTIVITY COMPANY" which is the registrant of leave.eu

As I mentioned back in October that company's directors include several of the prominent Brexiteers: internetnews.me/2020/10/02/bre…

The Guardian article says Mr Power is the "legal owner of the domain" - no he isn't - see above.
Yes his email address is a contact, but the domain is registered to the Irish company with the rather long name mentioned above

Last week an Irish TD (member of our parliament) started making waves about the domain name, website and company. @nealerichmond apparently lodged a complaint with @comreg about the domain. Comreg have nothing to do with .eu domain names, so I've no idea why he did that.

The .eu domain was setup under contract by the European Commission. It's governed by the EC and a number of EU level bits of legislation. And the team at @EUregistry have rules + policies governing who can register a domain etc etc

In very basic terms the .eu domain is for Europe / Europeans. Under the current policies + rules you can have one if you've got an address anywhere in the EU / EEA OR if you're an EU citizen.

The UK *was* part of the EU so individuals and organisations there could register .eu domain names from when .eu launched back in 2006 up until December 31st 2020 at midnight.

With the UK withdrawal they're no longer going to be part of the EU (doh!) so .eu domains no longer an option. The EC could have handled this situation a lot more gracefully but decided to play hardball. End result being that Jan 1st '21 a significant number of domains went dark

Still with me? (This is longer than I'd planned!)

Anyhow ... the leave.eu domain name wasn't impacted by the 1st January 2021 suspensions as the registrant had been changed to an Irish registered company months and months ago.

As I wrote last night, the leave.eu domain is currently offline. It's been suspended by the registry. Why?
Based on what I know (did I mention I'm on one of the advisory boards to @EUregistry ? So yes I do know what I'm talking about) it looks like it's validation

The registry's legal team have probably triggered a domain holder validation process. They've been doing this with ANY domain that contained "covid" related terms since last year blacknight.blog/some-changes-t…

So for some dumb reason the EC insists that the domain validation notices are sent directly by @EUregistry and NOT by the hosting provider / registrar that people have bought their domain name from. So based on our experience a lot of them don't see the email or think it's spam

the process is email based, so if you miss the emails or simply don't action them your domain(s) will end up being suspended and will stay down until you take action.

The process to get a domain working again is manual and involves the .eu registry's legal team. So as @LeaveEUOfficial 's staff didn't sort out the problem on Friday the absolute earliest they'll be able to fix it is Monday

So now onto some more of they hyperbole on #social and elsewhere ...

Obviously the @LeaveEUOfficial are going to have plenty of "fun" with this. They're going to make out it's some massive EU conspiracy against them. Since most people don't understand how domains work that'll probably work to a point.

The .eu domain names are all governed by the same rules and policies. There's no way for a domain to be singled out and treated with different rules / policies. If @EUregistry or the EC were to do that it'd cause huge issues

Bear in mind there are about 3 million .eu domain names currently registered to individuals, businesses and other organisations across Europe (and further afield)

The Irish TD who has been making noises about this is probably enjoying people's assumptions that he somehow got the domain suspended. He didn't.

So what's next?
I'd expect leave.eu to get their domain back in the next couple of days. Bear in mind the registry rules relate to the domain name NOT the content. As an Irish company the domain holder is bound by Irish law - that's a different matter entirely.

On the @comreg angle, which still confuses the hell out of me, they have *some* very limited purview over .ie domain names under Irish law. They have NOTHING to do with .eu

Oh and in case anyone thinks I'm "backing" @LeaveEUOfficial or anything like that - I most definitely am not, but while I see them keeping the .eu domain as hypocrisy I've no issue with them working within the @EUregistry rules

A few other bits. (The power of coffee!)
So what about the leave.eu website?

A domain name is NOT a website no matter how much people keep conflating the two.
In the case of leave.eu it was (is?) sitting on a server in a UK data centre.
Now here's where we're going to take a wee diversion into domains, websites + operators

Domains and websites can be run by separate entities.
So a domain name could be *registered* to company X and run by company Y.
Think licensing deals or even domain leasing

I mention this because @nealerichmond apparently lodged a complaint with the Irish DPA about leave.eu.
The domain can be registered to an Irish entity which is governed by GDPR but used by a UK entity which wouldn't be. Remember domain != website

Unless @LeaveEUOfficial start campaigning for an #irexit using the Irish registered domain I'm having difficulty seeing how GDPR would apply, but I'd bow to the likes of @daraghobrien or @JustCallMePips whose area that is.

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