It looks like Nominet, the registry of the British country-code domain .UK and several dozen domain zones, became the first major registry to shut down Whois. As is known, its validity period has officially expired, and now the RDAP service, which has replaced it, must be used for query about domain name registrants. According to Domain Incite, the service has already been cut off in 70 TLDs managed by Nominet. Queries over port 43 to most of Nominet’s former Whois servers are no longer returning responses, and their URLs have been removed from the corresponding IANA’s webpage.
This affects brand domains of many large companies, which Nominet operates, such as Amazon. According to the registry’s spokesperson, the decision was made after consultation with companies’ representatives in late January.
Meanwhile, some domains managed by Nominet continue using Whois, for example, .BROADWAY, .CYMRU, .GOP, .PHARMACY, and .WALES. These domains are part of the Brand Safety Alliance (BSA) copyright protection program backed by GoDaddy. BSA allows blocking domain names that match brand names in many domain zones, and the project is not yet ready to switch to RDAP.
Whois is also still used by Nominet’s flagman domain .UK, the British ccTLD. The reason behind this is that several large registrars were not ready to switch to RDAP. Of course, Nominet’s commitment to strictly following ICANN’s requirements deserves respect. However, the fact that GoDaddy and major UK registrars are not ready to switch to RDAP raises serious questions.
