Simon,

>Ok, so what happened to ADNA considering the creation of ".biz.au", which
>Michael Malone and I co-proposed multiple times, beginning prior to the
>formal creation of ADNA?

There is no substantial difference that I am aware of between the
proposal for .biz.au and the one for .pr.au.  OK, the characters are
different.  If you thing .biz. is a huge improvement on .pr,
say so.  I don't think the actual characters are that important.

If you look at the proposed policy for .pr.au you will see
it is unrelated to trademarks.  Trademarks are as much (and
as little) an issue for the DNS as the phone whitepages
(another name listing) are.

>Meanwhile, we all know that the only space which really
>matters in commercial terms is com.au - and that everything
>else is less important, commercially at least.

There's no doubt that Registrar competition in .com.au is
a serious issue, as it is currently where most of the
activity occurs.

Of course, the availability of a new commercial SLD
would tend to dilute some of that focus.  By the same
token, if ADNA had automatically accepted the recommendations
of one special interest group (trademark lawyers) and
accepted 200,000 trademarks into .com.au, that would have
increased the .com.au centricity of the .au namespace.

From a strictly business viewpoint, any sensible business
would favour a decision that gave them instant
access to another 200,000 customers.

ADNA voted against that.  ADNA should certainly get a
'public trust' tick of approval for its decision not
to approve trademark names for products in .com.au.

* There was clear support from a small community with
a vested interest - doesn't automatically make that
support wrong, but it doesn't make it right, either.
Hard to see automatic approval of vocal minority interest
as being consistent with 'public trust'.
* The inclusion of trademarks in .com.au would have
vastly increased its dominance of the .au namespace.
Difficult to see that outcome as consistent with 'public
trust' either.
* The including of trademarks in .com.au might have
made it impossible for 100,000 Australian businesess
(mostly small businesses) to get the name of
their choice.
Hard to see that being consistent with 'public trust'.
* ADNA did vote against a proposal that would have
had a direct financial benefit that could currently
only go to the one Registrar that operates there.
Pretty good from a 'public trust' viewpoint too.

Well, how about it folks - credit where credit is due, eh?

On another issue which some folks may not have considered,
two commercial Registrars have entered into contracts
to provide a service to thousands of customers in return
for a fee.  That means they have to be conservative
in accepting changes that might materially damage the
service they provide to customers, as they have legal
liability to thousands of customers.

Registrars currently operating in .au SLDS who register
names for free, have a helluva lot less liability issues
to worry about.  Since the customer gives no financial
consideration for the service and gets no guarantees,
those customer's rights of complaints are minimal
compared to customers of the commercial Registrars.

Given the relatively informal way existing Registrars
arrived at their positions,  it's quite likely that
a legal analysis of their position is that they
have far greater obligations to their customers
than to the authority of the .au namespace.

I'm not suggesting that's a good thing, but pointing
out that they are running real businesess and have to
consider these issues.

Regards, Mark