I don't disagree with Geoff, just a few added comments:

> 3. Will Melbourne IT expose its accounts to public scrutiny in
>    operating this service?

One could argue that that is their business. Especially if the
non-exclusive nature of the delegation turns into reality with
multiple organizations providing competing services. Mind you, with
just 10,000 odd domains served in .com.au that doesn't leave a lot of
annual revenue to distribute amongst multiple competing entities.

Personally I think that delegation to two separate entities would have
made the situation much less divisive, but would it have been viable
at this stage?

> 4. What will happen to financial surpluses generated by this activity?

Again, if it's a competing commercial entity (and of course it isn't
competing yet) then a profit is what they need to have to stay in
business.

[ This may seem like a side-track, but bear with me ]

Having said that, I have always wondered about viable ways of
long-term funding for AUSCERT et al because AUSCERT is one of the few
remaining net-services that has no natural revenue base.

A commercial AUNIC service strikes me as perhaps the most likely way
of taking a slice of the revenue to fund them. It *would* have been
great if the delegation had been done (or could be changed to be done)
with a proviso that some percentage or flat-rate per domain (say
$10ish) was provided as funds for AUSCERT.

The summary? If there are multiple, competing .com.au service
providers that are constrained to send some revenue to AUSCERT, then
IMHO their accounts and surpluses are their own business.

[ Why is it not a side-track? Because the AUNIC services are one of
the few services which pretty much all .au Internet users/ISPs must
use, therefore it makes some sense to have that revenue stream fund
essential net services that have no natural revenue base, such as the
.au name servers, AUSCERT, etc. So where you read AUSCERT above,
convert that to essential net services with no natural revenue base.]


Regards.