At 18:17 8/12/97 +1100, Pauline van Winsen - Uniq Professional Services wrote:
>
>in the last month there have been two articles in the australian press
>that i'm aware of that have contained what i'd consider serious inaccuracies
>in their content.
>
>the latest today was in the australian on the front page of the business
>section (p17). the article is also available by searching the australian's
>web site at: http://www.australian.au .com/ the article is called:
>"Net players happy to go IT alone".
>
>in the article is states that: "Peter Gerrand, chief executive officer of
>Melbourne IT, which administers the industry body responsible for ironing
>out problems with domain names."
>
>this implies that MIT administers ADNA. this is not the case.
>
>& the role described for ADNA as one of attempting to stop governmental
>control & court cases is short-sighted to say the least.
>
>also confusing is the statement that the Electoral Commission
>were represented within ADNA. where does this info. come from?
>
>the dispute resolution process referred to can only refer to the process
>MIT have setup for .com.au. or am i dreaming here?
>
>MIT != ADNA. they are not the same thing.
>
>it appears much of the article was written from the perspective of .com.au
>but applied to the entire .au namespace. the quote regarding requirements
>for obtaining a domain name suggest this is the case.
>
>some comments from those quoted in the article & the journalist
>concerned would be appreciated. 
>

Hi Pauline

I share your concern about the inaccuracies in recent media articles about
the DNS, especially when written by non-specialist journalists (as was the
case in the article you have cited). I am generally prepared to answer any
questions put to me by journalists, and see it as my duty to keep them well
informed; but I decline to be held responsible for any errors in what they
(or their subeditors) write. 

This particular article appears to have been stimulated by comments made by
the Trade Marks Registrar at the recent TMs and DNs Forums, where he
praised the com.au dispute resolution policy as being a world leader in
enabling Internet DN disputes to be resolved without parties having to go
to court. 

As you point out, the journalist did confuse the role of M-IT with that of
ADNA when explaining who M-T is. And he managed to misinterpret "Electronic
Commerce Australia - Tradegate" as "the Electoral Commission, Tradegate"
when I told him who the members of ADNA are. 

On the positive side, of the 22 sentences in the article, only two seem to
contain significant errors. And these errors did not undermine the broad
messages in the article, viz. that the Australian Internet industry is
interested in solving its problems as far as possible by self-regulation,
and has managed so far to avoid the kind of serious litigation occurring in
the UK through having a good dispute resolution process in place for
com.au. These broad messages strike me as being fair and relevant statements. 

PG