On Fri, 29 Jun 2007 13:26:11 +1000, Marty Drill - Domain Candy wrote:
> If .au opens up (and .net.au etc is kept, with com.au getting .au 
> (for example)), what is to stop companies from becoming 2LD 
> Registrars. So if "Bob" registered bank.au, then he could effectively 
> run his own 2LD. Some might argue that it is a free market, so be it. 
> However, it fundamentally devalues the existing 2LDs and can cause 
> confusion in the marketplace (as au.com did).

My take on this is that provided my existing domains are grandfathered, 
then I don't care if the top level is opened in addition - I would 
probably prefer future domains directly in the .au space, but I dread 
my current .com.au domains being taken away from me. Too high an 
investment in the current property. And, no, replacing it with 
something else would not help.
I recently had to move a domain name and it was 2 months before there 
was any strong recovery in traffic and thus income.
I agree that adding more 3lds would seem more useful, despite the lack 
of success of the new TLDs (.museum anyone? .aero? :( )
I think it would have to be required to be used. eg. banks would no 
longer qualify for .com.au if .bank.au was available - but there is one 
major problem: sensibly you would only open, at least initially, spaces 
where the industry takeup was common (.podiatrist.au would not be the 
place to start) and most of the companies who would be 'required' to 
use the new 2ld would already have a .com.au and grandfathering would 
(surely) mean they could keep them.

There was recently some furore over qld.edu.au running 4lds for the 
schools.
Whoever runs the edu.au (I forget their name; I don't deal with them) 
was complaining that qld should pay extra fees to do so (very rough 
summary - large white paper involved) or simply shouldn't do it.
I can see similar issues with the .au space.
Some people offer similar services under .com domains, such as the 
mentioned .au.com, and the ongoing problem for clients is that it looks 
legit to them, but they aren't buying through an accredited registrar 
and are at the whim of the supplier, with no protections.
Banning this practice would have interesting side effects, for edge 
cases, eg. I recently said to my husband that we should pick up 
tom.id.au, dick.id,au and harry.id.au for the kids so they would have 
them when they are older (err, those aren't really their names ;)).
He said we would just give them access to tom.degroot.id.au, etc.
But this would probably be against the rules, if we also wanted to stop 
people from selling something.bank.au without being a registrar.

Here's a question - has anyone thought to ask the *search engines* for 
a submission on this?
Particularly on the results of the change.
The way the internet works at the moment, the search engines are what 
makes 80% of the traffic move around, and in the case of .au traffic 
that is principally Google.
If 2lds are *not* grandfathered, has anyone thought to ask them just 
how they could help?

Everyone commenting - you did make a submission, didn't you?
I know I didn't - I thought about it, but decided I didn't have 
anything coherent to write ('Change bad! No do!' isn't usually very 
well received).
I'd like to make a suggestion on the methodology - opening up a mailing 
list like this might be one way to get more open discussion happening.
Many people will offer an opinion on specific points where they won't 
write a long unprompted submission.

IMHO - YMMV
Lea
~ on the ground, developing websites for income
-- 
Lea de Groot
Elysian Systems
Brisbane