A question I thought I'd put to this list for your thoughts and advice...

Many years ago, 2 friends got together and thought of an idea for a
website. A .org.au domain was registered by one of the two guys (because
he knew about registering and DNS hosting stuff) and the other guy did all
the development and running of the website.

A couple of years later (about 4-5 yrs ago), the guy that develops,
maintains, and runs the website had two other guys join him. These 3 have
developed, maintained, and run the website for the last 4-5 years creating
it into a thriving community and one of australia's highly rated websites
for it's intended audience. The person (4th guy) with which the .org.au
domain is registered (and has the domain password) has had nothing to do
with the website or domain (other than having the authoritive DNS record
for it on his DNS server) since it was created 7+ yrs ago.

The 3 guys that develop, maintain and run the .org.au domain also own the
equivalent .com.au domain name, as well as having a registered business
name (as a non-profit org), and trademark for the 'entity' (eg.
entity.org.au and entity.com.au)

The .org.au domain name is what the entity is known as within it's
community, including having high ranking within google and all other
search engines, merchandise, advertising, etc. and because it's a
non-profit org it prefers to stay with the .org.au domain rather than the
commercial .com.au domain it also has. The .com.au domain was registered
mainly for protection purposes.

A recent change of web hosting provider for the domain, and the new
hosting provider requires that it's own DNS servers are the primary and
secondary DNS servers for the .org.au domain. (Previously the 4th guys DNS
records for the domain just pointed to the IP of the hosted web server).

After contacting the 4th guy and asking him to update the DNS record for
the domain to make the new hosting providers DNS servers the primary and
secondary DNS for the domain, he refused to do so. So far, he's not
responded to questions as to why not. This is the 3rd time in the 7+ yrs
that the 3 guys have had issue's with this 4th guy over DNS'ing. The 3
guys believe that it will simply be 'geekdom' and power/control that the
4th guy will not make the primary and secondary

As I have (tried to) explain/outline in the above background, this 4th guy
has no stake or ownership in the entity other than being the person that
registered the .org.au domain name many years ago, holds the domain record
password, and hosts the authorative DNS record. He is not a stakeholder in
the business name, trademark, or .com.au domain and has no involvment in
the running and development of the entity, it's website, or any other
area's of operation.

So, on to my question ... what would the auDA policy be on who is the
'owner' of this .org.au domain (I believe it would be the 3 guys - or more
accurately the registered business name) and what steps/actions would be
involved in these 3 guys getting an auDA decision to transfer ownership of
the the domain record over to them (or more accurately, the business
name).

Many Thanks.

-- 
Cheers,
Jason