A new regulator aiming to curb the dominance of tech giants has started work in the UK.
The Digital Markets Unit (DMU) will first look to create new codes of conduct for companies such as Facebook and Google and their relationship with content providers and advertisers.
An Extraordinary General Meeting held Monday saw four of Nominet’s directors including Chair Mark Wood removed from their positions, while CEO and board member Russell Haworth stood down on Sunday, the day before the meeting. The Board clear-out follows a campaign for reform of the .uk ccTLD registry by Public Benefit .UK.
Nominet’s CEO Russell Haworth has become the sacrifice in the ongoing battles over management of the .uk ccTLD. In an announcement today, Nominet said Haworth “intends to step down from the Board and relinquish his duties as CEO. Russell will complete a short transition, arrangements for which details are being finalised. The board will announce interim leadership measures in due course.” Whether Haworth’s sacrifice minimises the fallout coming from today’s EGM remains to be seen.
UK intelligence agency GCHQ intends to use artificial intelligence to tackle issues from child sexual abuse to disinformation and human trafficking.
Nominet has given some ground in light of a number of members, currently around 17.4% of members, proposing to dismiss half the board including the entire senior executive team and a number of other changes. As part of its efforts to appease the insurrectors, Nominet is proposing to scale up its public benefit programme, freeze .uk prices for at least two years and freeze board-level pay through the end of 2022, among other proposals.
The vast, and growing, volume of child abuse material being created and shared online is threatening to overwhelm police efforts to tackle it, senior officers have told the Guardian.
Britain’s enemies are attempting to use social media to tear the “fabric of society apart”, one of the country’s top generals has warned.
London’s Sunday Telegraph reported of an insurrection brewing at Nominet, the .uk registry, with a former chair of the BBC “backing a bid to oust nearly half of the board of Nominet … amid anger over rising pay and falling contributions to good causes.”
In a case decided this month, the England and Wales High Court ruled a domain name may be “intangible personal property” for the first time. The case involved Perlake, a Uruguayan company now in liquidation, the domain name blackjack.com and a failure to pay commission derived from the business using the domain name. There were also issues about the legitimacy of a loan agreement and business dealings with those involved.
[news release] Predatory online groomers are a “grave and widespread threat” to children in their bedrooms as new figures reveal the record-breaking scale of child sexual abuse imagery on the internet.