Hi again Kim,

Just a comment on the second component of your posting; i.e. "Furthermore, I
have received a handful of the ING letters hawking .biz and .info for $250,
but this does not fall within .au regulation".

Always hoping these issues can be debated rationally (I agree with Larry
that contentious issues are best dealt with between protagonists, however
let's never forget the value of open debate and consensus); the 350 or so
members of this list probably represent less than 1% of industries operating
in Australia. There is an excellent representation within the IT industry,
but how many are truly representative of the broader Australian IT
customer-base?

There is an expectation within most industries that commercial transactions
are, and remain, confidential. This belief is the basis of the concept of
"validated suppliers", designed to streamline inter-business transactions
(of which the Internet is but one small component). I.e. - When we purchase
from company (a) we validate their products and services in the hope of
building a future trust relationship. Once this relationship is built,
usually following a few additional purchases, we do not seek quotations or
other guarantees for future purchases. This is a normal business practice
adopted by most industries (and I'm sure many of the people here work on
this basis).

So to get to the point...

As with many of our suppliers, we have a trust relationship with our .au
domain provider (even though 99% within our company would have no idea who
they are), which means their correspondence and invoices are actioned
without undue analysis on our part. Obviously this saves us time and money,
and is the reason we enter into these types of relationship. So what happens
when another company gains access to our transactional records and sends us
a letter (complete with an area for payment details), advising us that out
"account" is due for payment? - The answer is simple... we raise a payment
voucher. And what happens if the company who sent us the letter is in fact,
not our validated supplier?... Well, apart from sometimes paying twice
requiring us to forward a leter of demand to one of the recipients, we get
very annoyed that our transactional information was made available to a
third party. This is not how to do business.

There would be some who would suggest that the fault is ours, because we
should assess and analyse all correspondence that comes into our company -
and, as a company operating in partnership with other companies in
consortium exporting $2 Billion worth of product every year, this would
certainly mean more administrative jobs... but please remember that an
invoice for $250.00 hardly warrants undue attention. We spend more than that
on coffee every day.

We expect our suppliers to respect the confidential nature of our
transactions. We expect our suppliers to operate in an ethical manner. We
expect our suppliers not to divulge our information to a third party. We
expect our suppliers to belong to appropriate industry bodies, and to follow
acknowledged industry codes of behaviour. In return for these expectations,
we pay a good price for quality goods and services. If our expectations are
not met, we shop somewhere else.

I just wonder if the IT industry has really caught up with these realities
yet?

Don