>>.....
>>As I said before, my main problem with your proposal is the inconsistency
>>of having two commercial domains which do essentially the same thing.  If I
>>want to find Microsoft Australia, it seems logical to look at
>>www.microsoft.com.au.  To have to check www.microsoft.biz.au seems rather
>>redundant and would probably mean most companies would go for both.

No, you read their URL on their products, or on their TV adverts, or on
their business cards, or in their email, or via lookups on web crawlers.
WHAT the URL is doesn't actually matter - that you can find it easily is a
function of how well microsoft market their URL. If they have a "natural"
URL because they got in early, good luck to them, but that's an accident of
timing, not a precedent that all other companies, in general, will be able
to follow.

I saw a "TV" advert (on an ansett flight) last week for a cable TV channel
which had taken up a name in .NF despite being an australian cable TV
channel. Didn't matter, I saw the URL. If I forget the exact URL, I'll find
them with an altavista search. 


>
>Companies that already have, or propose to obtain, a com.au domain, will
>have to seriously consider reserving the same name in the biz.au domain,
>firstly to ensure that they can be found under either name, and secondly,
>and perhaps most importantly, to prevent another entity from acquiring
>rights to the name.  We certainly don't want to go down the track of the 
>USA where domain names are being acquired for speculative purposes.

We are already there. As soon as DNA's charge money for domain names,
speculative name acqusition will occur, has occurred, is occurring, and will
keep occurring. .COM is again the canonical example of this.

Again, the answer is promotion of what YOU decide YOUR primary URL and/or
domain name will be. If you choose to register in other spaces as well,
that's just fine, go and do it. It's reality.  If you pay the fees, you're
funding the overheads required to support your database entry. Just be
careful about confusing database entries with rights to a name outside of
the Internet world.

>
>I'd prefer to see competition for com.au registry services, in preference
>to another business domain.  I have yet to see an explanation as to why 
>this cannot happen now.  Who is holding us all to ransom?
>

Politics and people, not technology. Jan/Feb (I think) is the timescale for
the release of policy documents defining how second and subsequent DNA's
will be able to function in a common name space in this country. Michael can
remind us all of the relevant URL's for the discussion papers.

Simon
---
Simon Hackett, Technical Director, Internode Systems Pty Ltd
31 York St [PO Box 284, Rundle Mall], Adelaide, SA 5000 Australia
Email: simon§internode.com.au  Web: http://www.on.net
Phone: +61-8-8223-2999          Fax: +61-8-8223-1777