Larry Bloch wrote:

]   Domain registration is a low tech, high admin industry. $5 per name won't r
]  eally pay for anything.

As an aside, for registries and registrars there needs to be an injection
of *high* tech at the start to get the system automated.  Avoiding large
rooms full of telephone operators and minimising the risk of human error
(with legal implications therefrom) will help keep costs down to users.

George Michaelson wrote: 
] Nice try. the $5 is for *GOVERNANCE* costs at .au Larry. Its not to "pay"
] for anything else. And if you do the sums, its within the ballpark for
] infrastructure costs at that level. Its not wrong by an order of magnitude
] or anything.

I guess I wasn't clear about this in my previous post.
The $5 is proposed to pay for the equivalent of IANA/POC/kre (governance),
not for CORE/InterNIC (registries).  Assuming I understand the NOIE audisc
paper correctly, that is.

Presumably the/each registry paying the $5*N (to the governance regime)
would pay the administrative costs of doing so (and build it into the
cost which it then charges to registrars for domain names).

Is NOMINET both a registry and a DNS governance regime?
If so, is this a Good Thing?

]   What I would like there to be a recognition of is that the real issue is 
]  .com.au and how we reduce cost and increase competition in this area. The
]  other 2LD's are clearly important, but not nearly as relevant.
] 
] AN issue yes. THE issue, no. This is not a single-issue debate.

IMHO introducing competition at registrar level for com.au is the biggest
single issue and the most urgent at the moment.  OTOH, if we are going to
the effort of setting up a non-trivial governance regime, then it ought
to be able to handle other issues in future too.

] Witness the never-ending flood of people promoting generics like
] pizza.au in the namespace.

Can't say I've seen much of this in *.au (certainly not for 2LDs *.au).

] Also complaints about QoS are not about "cost" or about "competition"

Presumably competition at registrar level would tend to drive up QoS.
(I doubt you'd get much argument from this Government about that.)

] And governance of the "other" 2LDs is just as important for the wider
] community, many of whom care deeply about names being relevant and available
] in those spaces.

Are there specific problems with governance in "other" 2LDs which need
to be addressed at the moment?  I'm not talking about importance, just
whether change is required to the existing arrangements.
__________________________________________________________________________
 David Keegel <djk&#167;cyber.com.au>  URL: http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/
Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management