At 11:47 PM 24/12/96, Michael Malone wrote:
>We have sought legal
>advice about Melbourne IT's right to remove our domain if we
>fail to pay, and our advice is that it would be unconscionable
>conduct and open MIT to considerable recourse. We are advising
>all clients to withhold payment on the three hundred odd COM.AU
>domains connected through us.
 
I do wonder about the legal position of Melbourne IT in terms of imposing a
charge and threatening withdrawl of a delegation in those (numerous) cases
where there is no prior agreement or contract in place between the party and
Melbourne IT relating to a delegation os an existing domain name. 

Maybe MelbourneIT are working on the theory that for $100 noone will bother to
undertake a legal recourse to this action - however I must believe that this is not
the case, as it would otherwise indicate an extremely cynical attitude on the part of 
MelbourneIT to thier current role within the .au dns.

However I for one would be interested to hear legal opinion as to whether
Melbourne IT can undertake this charge where there is no prior contract or
agreeement in place, and also whether payment of this imposed charge implies
a binding of the party to some form of agreement or contract with Melboune IT.

This saga of com.au is certainly not one which has indicated a high level
of understanding of the Internet space, and quite frankly I'm not
sure that we can afford to have this wallow around for much longer. I would
be interested to see ISOC-AU taking an active role here, in much the same
fashion as I see ISOC taking an active role in the generic top level
domain space. 

There are a few very simple actions which could improve the current
situation:

- competition within com.au immediately.

- contacts (or MOUs) between domain name administrators and the delegating
  authority indicating the terms of the administrative role and the obligations
  associated with the role

- terms periods for administrators

- consideration of intellectual property rights being the foremost policy driver rather
  than the undefineable "protection of generic name" policies

- allows names to be tradeable between entities

- define a mechanism which ensure some form of escrow of the data

In reading the postings to this mailer, it is reasonable to state that some folk
are of the view that Melboune IT is ducking each and every one of these
issues, and simply heading straight for as much money as they can extract
from the domain system. As I indicated above I do not share such a view, and
I would like to believe that MelbourneIT are genuinely interested in participating
in a structure which does have the attributes as listed above. However seeing
Melbourne IT rake over the last 9 year's worth of com.au delegations for
$100 a shot  by March 1997 does not do much for my case!


   Geoff



-- 
Geoff.Huston§telstra.net

Network Technical Manager    Locked Bag 5744,
Telstra Internet             Canberra  ACT  2601
                             AUSTRALIA

ph  +61 6 208 1908
fax +61 6 248 6165


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