Unfortunately I am unable to attend the 26 June meeting in Melbourne. As it
appears there is no agenda for the meeting I am relunctant to raise the
matters I am concerned about in detail without knowing what authority the
meeting has. Is is convened with the support of the Minister for C, IT and
A for example?  What will happen to the information presented at the
meeting?

Notwithstanding the obove, I mention, briefly, our concern with the
criteria and process by which applications for 'edu.au' domain addresses
are considered.  I hasten to mention that this is not a criticism or
reflection on the person who undertakes this at present who, I understand,
commendably does this on a voluntary basis without assistance.

As I understand it, at present the criteria for consideration of 'edu.au'
domain addresses are not clearly defined, so that there is potential for
inconsistency to occur in the application of national, state and local
categories and as the interpretation of requests rests with one person with
no avenue of appeal some anomolies are bound to occur.

As a consequence, our institution has had to register an '.edu' address in
USA to avoid being categorised as a state institution with a 'vic.edu.au'
address.  This situation is not satisfactory either but we considered it
better to be mistaken for a US institution than be mistaken as just a state
institution.  The most perturbing aspect of having to take this action was
that we have found examples of local institutions with national 'edu.au'
addresses.

If the purpose of the meeting is to consider the processes for registration
of 'edu.au' as well as 'com.au' domain addresses I would request that the
concerns we have experienced be brought to the attention of the meeting.

Dr Robert Treseder
Director
Australian Academy of Design
Telephone  +61 3 9689 0100
Facsimile  +61 3 9689 0122
PO Box 163, South Melbourne VIC 3205  Australia