Luke
For the 17 January meeting of the DNS Forum in Sydney, I request that an
agenda item be set on Changes to COM.AU Policies.

I will be seeking Forum endorsement of the following proposals:

A. That the Domain Name Rules within the General (Naming) Policy for
COM.AU [ref. http://www.MelbourneIT.com.au/com_au/com.au_policy.html] be
amended as follows:

A1: that Rule 5, that excludes any word 'that is a common English
dictionary word, such as "infinity"', be amended to except (i.e. to
allow to be registered) common words that are distinctive words within
the registered company names or registered business names or trademarks
belonging to the applicant organisation. In each case the company name
or business name or trademark must be registered in Australia.

The argument for this change is that (i) too may exceptions to the
current rule were made under a previous DNA regime for it to be fair to
continue to apply it to new applicants, and (ii) if a company has
already exercised initiative and precedence in protecting a common word
as part of its company/business name or trademark, then it should be
entitled to use that word as its third level domain name.  

Anticipating some of your thoughts, I suggest that a transparent process
will need to be approved at this meeting for (1) communicating the
change of rule to the industry, especially to past applicants whose
applications were rejected under the current rule; (2) indicating a
future date - e.g. two months beyond 17 January - at which new
applications for common words will be considered, at which time all
contending bids for the same word can be identified; and (3) a fair
process for then selecting one out of several competing bids for the
same common word.

A2: that Rule 6, that excludes any 'generic English dictionary word
indicating a class or type, such as "photography"', be deleted - on the
grounds that (i) making a decision on what is "generic" is intrinsically
subjective and therefore vulnerable to arbitrary decision making, and
(ii) Rule 6 it is covered by Rule 5 anyway.

A3: that Rule 7, that excludes any word 'that is not an unqualified
Australian place name such as "Melbourne"', be made more precise, by
only excluding those Australian place names appearing in the list of
Australian Post Codes listed in the back of the White Pages directories.
(That is the way that the COM.AU DNA is currently interpreting this rule
anyway.)   

B. That to encourage fair competition between the DN Administrators for
COM.AU, NET.AU and BIZ.AU, that the General (Naming) Policies under
which they operate be identical, so that they can then cover the same
market, namely that of commercial users of the Internet in Australia. 
(Pricing Policies should obviously be deregulated.)

Regards
PG
---
Professor Peter Gerrand
CEO Melbourne IT