UK domain name outfit Internetters has called on Nominet UK to take the "moral high ground" and set up and fund a code of practice in a bid to stamp out cowboy domain sellers.

Internetters claims the UK domain name industry must police itself or face the threat of external regulation.

This latest call for an industry-wide code of practice follows a warning from Nominet UK earlier this week in which it named and shamed a company for using sales tactics that "pressurised" people into buying domains.

Internetters claims that one-off warnings such as this aren't enough and wants Nominet UK - the national Registry for all domain names ending .uk - to take a lead, even if this means that the cost of buying a domain increases for end users.

In a statement, Internetters said that Nominet's naming and shaming gives the "misconception that the public can rely on Nominet as a governing body which oversees citizen's interests by highlighting all dubious .uk domain name practices - be warned, this is not the case."

Nominet UK's MD, Lesley Cowley, rejected the claims saying that a code of practice just among domain registrars was just "not feasible".

Instead, she said that Nominet UK was working with the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) and the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) to draw up an industry-wide code of practice for the whole of the UK Internet industry. ®

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