Sorry for crossposting this, but I think the issue is worthy.

The DNS Forum has just finished meeting at the offices of Phillips Fox
in Sydney. The meeting was ostensibly to create a company to replace
Robert Elz as the administrator of the .au domain space. The meeting
agreed on a set of policies that should shape what Australian Domain
Name Administration Ltd (ADNA) will be, and what it will stand for.

A transcript of the meeting will be on the IntIAA web site at
www.intiaa.asn.au on Monday. I was the only journalist there, and as the
only attendant who was not a stakeholder, I think it would be helpful
for me to list some of the key points to come out of discussions:

- ADNA will ostensibly be for the .au namespace only. Luke Carruthers,
chairing the discussion in his capacity of secretary of IntIAA,
originally had proposed that it would have authority over generic top
level domains that were issued to servers in Australia, but this was
howled down.

- ADNA will not take on the responsibility for the .au root name server.
This was also proposed and then rejected by the meeting.

- ADNA will be legally created in the next couple of weeks, and will
have its first AGM on May 16, at a venue to be announced. There may be
video conferencing involved, but unless someone gets altruistic the
price tag of around $5000 is prohibitive.

- Membership will be $1000, not $5000 as proposed. Members of the
meeting thought this would be a good balance between what ADNA needed to
be able to run, what worthy organisations could pay, and what would
discourage frivolous membership applications. 2LD DNAs will
automatically pay membership, at a level to be determined by the Board.

- The ADNA Board will be elected by the membership, where only
non-profit organisations are allowed to vote.

- There was what you might call "robust" discussion of whether ISPs
would dominate ADNA. Central to this discussion was whether state-based
ISP association like WAIA and SAIA should be allowed on the Board.
Richard Cousins, president of IntIAA, led the discussion in opposition
to Michael Malone and Simon Hackett, plus another bloke whose name I
didn't catch. Cousins warned of a "Senate-type approach", and . The
issue was eventually resolved by the previous point, where the
membership would decide.

- Draft copies of the ADNA Articles and Memorandum of Association were
distributed. Concern was expressed that these had not been publicised
earlier. They will apparently be put up on the IntIAA web site soon, but
will be amended to reflect the directives of the meeting, according to
Luke Carruthers.


There were other important events, but that's all I can think of now. 
If anyone wants to talk directly to me about it, they can ring or
e-mail  as per the details in my sig below.

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Paul Montgomery, Internet Journalist for Computer Week - APN Computing
E: monty§apnpc.com.au    Ph: +61 2 9936 8793    Fax: +61 2 9955 8871
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