Michael Malone wrote:

> Summary
> -------
> 
> It is proposed that a registry for BIZ.AU, intended for
> all Australian businesses, be established under the
> proposed guidelines of the DNS Summit.
> 
> Public comment is invited.

First, my congratulations. Movement towards putting DNS registration in
Australia for commercial users onto a sane commercial footing is long
overdue.

Upon reading Michael's proposal, 3 things came to mind.

1. In an environment where product cycles are measured in weeks, waiting
up to 4 months for COM.AU domain registrations in the past has been
disasterous. Whilst I am certain that iiNet and Internode will not allow
such delays to occur in their service, it is essential from a commercial
standpoint to know an exact upper bound on processing times for
registration requests. In addition to any turnaround guarantees that
iiNet and Internode may offer as part of their pricing structures as
they develop them, it appears appropriate that, as part of their
obligations in taking up management of the BIZ.AU namespace, worst case
upper bounds on processing time of accepted registration requests be
established. For example "Any correct, complete, acceptable application
received by iiNet or Internode (or any subsequent registration body) in
accordance with their application procedures will be processed within no
more than 5 business days." What I am proposing is that some degree of
predictability from a commercial standpoint be made intrinsic to
registration requests in the BIZ.AU namespace.

2. Competition/disaster. The introduction of competition into the
maintenance of a single namespace is an excellent idea and deserves to
be protected. Certainly offering protection to clients of one
organisation should disaster befall the other is appropriate, but it
would be desirable for a facility whereby another organisation could
become competitively involved should should a disaster occur (or,
perhaps, if either of iiNet or Internode acquires the other) during the
initial 18 month period. Regrettably I don't have a complete proposal
for how this might be achieved.

3. Transferability. I'm not sufficiently clear on the legal territory
here, but it seems that there may be a need for a name to be
transferable in the event that one organisation acquires and dissolves
another, but takes up its name as a trading name. Clearly this could be
overcome by turning the acquired entity into a shelf company, but it
seems that a complete refusal to transfer may unneccessarily constrain
the activities of organisations using the regisration service.

-- 

      - Raz

"It often upsets a man's God fantasies to have   (Misquoted? from     )
someone shoot down one of his helicopters."      (Ben Elton's "Stark" )