At 13:23 +1100 7/2/01, Baljevic, Dusan wrote:

>So, in my books, if I own a company XYZ Pty. Ltd, I want
>to make sure that xyz.com or xyz.com.au is mine as well.
>
>DNS is part of business activities and an important one.
>Concise summary: if a company is allowed to register
>a specific business name, then it is their right to
>register the same domain name.

So what you are arguing is that if you're an Australian business 
called XYZ Pty Ltd that you should have an automatic right to the 
domain name xyzptyltd.com.au.

If you're trading under a Victorian state-based business name XYZ, 
presumably you would have the domain name XYZ.vic.com.au.

This sounds to me like an almost-perfect model. Apart from the wider 
character set available to business names (including §, ! and .), 
there is a one-to-one match between business names and domain names. 
No overlap, no conflicts, no disputes.

Under this structure .com would need to be abandoned as there would 
be no organisations which have no country of registration.

As for your proposal to use the DNS as a directory service, imagine 
the case where there are 4 businesses all run by different people: 2 
state-based businesses XYZ (Vic) and XYZ (NSW), XYZ Pty Ltd and ZXZZY 
who owns the trademark XYZ.

Under the existing domain name hierarchy only one of these businesses 
will have the desirable xyz.com domain name, and probably the same 
one will have xyz.com.au. What do the rest of the businesses register?

How are people expected to use the DNS to locate these businesses 
when three of them have unguessable domain names like xyz.cx, 
xyz-something.com and the other isn't even on the web?

The answer is that the DNS is completely and utterly inappropriate 
and useless as a directory service. It is perhaps the fact that your 
30-40,000 daily contacts (1-2 seconds each :) are trying to use the 
DNS as a directory service which is leading to their frustration.

  ...R.