Peter Gerrand wrote:

> Like George Michaelson, I do not support moves to allow open slather on
> COM.AU  DNs, because this would immediately create a speculative market
> in broking desirable domain names, which in turn would artificially
> inflate the costs of acquiring a domain name.  

is it worth looking at what happened when personalised car number
plates were introduced? 

  - a whole bunch of plates were snapped up for speculation 
    & are still traded every week

  - the rta (et al) banned a small number of combinations of letters &
    numbers, since they were displayed in a public place & 
    could be found offensive

  - everything seems to have settled down ok now, even with only 6 
    characters to choose from.

my main point is: why not allow speculation? if entity A wants
computer.com.au badly enough, it should be willing to pay entity
B who owns it. the domain authority doesn't need to worry about
_how_ two entities agree who should get the name (or whether there
is a court case over it). 

all the domain authority should do is press the button that says: 
"this domain name has this tech contact and this admin contact".

in any case, advertising that domain name is then the problem of
the owner - if people can't find their business address on the 'net
- tough. but the entity have the opportunity to create it's own
identity without having to deal with the mysticism & morality of
the domain authority. 


yet another 2c worth. i think that brings the whole case to a
couple of dollars....

cheers  

p

-- 
Peter Lees  (peter§next.com.au)   -   Technical Manager,   Next Online
tel: +61 2 9310 1433 *  fax: +61 2 9310 1315  * http://www.next.com.au

"You can have a day off when you're dead, Baldrick, and not before..."