Quoting Marty Drill - Domain Candy on Tuesday May 31, 2005:
|
| opposition, though is very unlikely). The article below is part of Labor's
| opposition to this industry's self regulation.  The horse has bolted on the
| release of geographic names. However if stkilda.com.au (or similar) ends up
| resolving to an Adult site, this will be 'evidence' needed to say that the
| industry is unable to self regulate.

At the absence of any other hints, I'm not sure whether this is a hint
at Labor's active opposition to industry self regulation, or rather
simple political opportunism by trying to create a hot-button issue.

| Not attempting to be an alarmist. I have a strong belief that this industry
| should retain self regulation (and the policies that it imposes), as the
| Internet needs flexibility to change policy and respond to market forces. If
| legislated, I fear that flexibility, efficiency and to a certain extend,
| innovation, will be hampered.

The downside with such flexibility is that policy changes are rarely
reversible in domain names (specifically allocation policy). Once
the horse has bolted on liberalisation, it is nigh impossible to
reverse. Hypothetically, I don't think it likely that you will see any
conceivable operator of .au telling the phone company Orange that they
have to hand back their orange.com.au domain name due to a change of
heart.

kim