UK domain registrar facing member mutiny
Boardroom bonuses, silenced critics and charity cut-off lead to calls for Nominet to be revamped
Boardroom bonuses, silenced critics and charity cut-off leads to calls for Nominet to be revamped.
Domain registrar Nominet is facing calls for a complete overhaul after a series of controversial decisions by its board.
Angry members believe it’s been hijacked by directors who are paying themselves over the odds, whilst stripping charity donations and reducing member influence.
“It’s looking and sounding like a for-profit enterprise, but without the levers of accountability you would expect,” said Emily Taylor, CEO of online governance consultancy Oxford Information Labs.
“It’s a characteristic of some internet governance companies, [of] how incredibly cash rich, how profitable, they are.
“When you say ‘not-for-profit’ people think ‘charity shop’, but if you look at turnover and salaries, where else is the money going to go? If you can’t distribute it to shareholders and you close down your charitable foundation, the only thing you can do is enrich the leadership.”
According to Nominet’s annual report, CEO Russell Haworth was paid £593,000 in salary, bonuses, pension contributions and other fees. Two other board members earned upwards of £300,000, while the 14-member board awarded itself £2,080,000 in benefits over the year.
While high-earning executives are hardly new, there’s a feeling that Nominet – registered in 1996 as a company limited by guarantee, which means profits can’t be taken by members – has changed course. The Nominet Trust was closed down in 2018, having given away an average of £5 million a year to various causes.
Nominet now refers to itself as “a profit with a purpose company”. Its contributions to what it calls “public benefits” partners in the year to March 2020 amounted to only £1.9 million. It told us that it “seeks commercial success and our strategy is to focus on our registry and cybersecurity businesses,” but that change of direction isn’t universally popular.
“This clearly isn’t right,” said Ciprian Cucuruz, an independent domain name investor. “I’ve only been a member for a year and it’s painfully clear that Nominet has lost its way.
“From a legal perspective, Nominet is supposed to serve its members, founded to develop and maintain the UK registry. From the start it was said that profit would be used for the public good – it’s turning into what the board seem to think of as a FTSE 500 company.”
Silencing critics
According to members, Nominet’s attitude to critics has been summed up by the organisation closing down its members forum. In the middle of a dramatic online AGM in September,