I see no issues with this. Bigpond is entitled to run their services
as they please, and the customers are entitled to vote with their feet
and either change companies or DNS Servers. It's not a serious issue,
and it's not anything to even warrant a news article. Verisign was a
very different case, and was certainly not reasonable in any sense of
the word. This however, affects a portion of Australian internet users
who can easily opt out, change DNS, or move ISP (which they'd probably
be advised to do anyhow if they're with Bigpond).

Michael

On Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 11:10 AM, Brett Fenton
<brett.fenton&#167;netregistry.com.au> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Like most product changes you make, it's not opt-in, you make the change and
> publicize, it's a far more normal way for things to occur. I can't think of a
> product mod we've ever done at NR where we've asked for opt-in acceptance, nor
> as a customer of tech services have I ever been asked to opt-in to
> modification to a product.
>
> As a direct comparison, did ISP's ask end users for opt-in when they blocked
> Port 25 to remote mail servers? No, but from a technical point of view I
> understand why they did it, and ultimately it's probably a good thing (as long
> as there is an opt-out), I didn't see Sys Admins making complaints at a change
> like this, even though there was a far more obvious and direct effect on end
> users.
>
> I don't see it as a 'good thing'. I'm actually pretty neutral to it. A
> journalist called me, asked questions for 2 minutes and I explained what I
> considered the pros and cons to be. I don't believe the sky will fall in
> because they are essentially monetizing failed searches, much like while I've
> never used a sponsored link on a monetized domain I've ended up on, I don't
> see the sky falling in because there is a business model around this (it's to
> me a minor occassional inconvenience).
>
> If I was a customer of BigPond and was getting this right now, would I:
>
> a) Bother opting out
> b) Ever click on a sponsored link
>
> No, to both.
>
>> Hi Brett,
>>
>> Perhaps you can tell me why, if this is such a good thing, it isn't an
>> opt-in system?
>>
>> Pros:
>>
>> you know precisely who wants this.
>>
>> you get no bad publicity.
>>
>> Cons:
>>
>> You actually have to 'sell' the service to people. Rather than just
>> assuming they want it.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Anand
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