George wrote:
>Can you explain why the loan is necessary? The comment regarding
legal fees is a little unclear.

George, this relates to the overall issue of what expenses ADNA is
likely to incur, and where the income is coming from.  Some
unavoidable expenses are things like legal fees and audit fees - any
formal incorporated organisation, even a non-profit one, does incur
some costs.  So far the only expenses have been the legal costs
associated with setting up the ADNA entity.

But what other costs are likely to be incurred, and even more
importantly, who's going to pay?

Let me focus on the commercial domains - those ones set up for us
for-profit companies to whom the internet is just a business tool.
According to the bluetongue figures, over 90% of requests for .au
sub-domain names now are for businesses.

There are certain 'deliverables' that are relevant to business.
We'd like the administration of domain names to be effective,
efficient, fair, and reliable.
? Effective, in that we want it to work - we don't want the
situation where a domain name administrator takes the money for
setting up a business sub-domain but the job isn't done correctly,
or is incomplete six months later.
? Efficient, in that we want it for the lowest practical cost - DNA
competition may be a good way of ensuring this.
? Fair, in that we want it to be even-handed - ie, if my preferred
domain name is knocked back because it doesn't pass a selection
criteria (for example,  its a geographic location with a postcode)
then I'd be concerned if my competitor's domain is approved when it
has the same problem.  Another part of this fairness, is why should
one business get a name for free in say .edu.au or .asn.au or
whatever while I have to pay for .com.au?
? Reliable, including issues such as what happens if a DNA goes out
of business - is there a strategy in place for someone to take over
the work with no loss of service.

Ensuring those requirements are met may take some policies &
processes and those may necessitate some unavoidable costs - even if
the costs aren't major, they're still there.  Who should pay those
costs?  Those of us who are business users - that's my
recommendation.  Can anyone suggest a better alternative?

That leads to two secondary issues:

1.  How are the costs recouped from us businesses - for example, say
the costs of ensuring the whole system works reliably, has back-up
etc, comes out to fifty cents per business domain per year.  The
options to cover the costs include flat rate levy, percentage of DNA
fee, once off vs annual, etc.  Its open for discussion.

2.  What about costs associated with not-for-profit organisations,
charities, etc?  Who covers those?  In other times, Governments
assumed this role, but given the current government user-pays
philosophies where each end user is expected to carry the costs they
incur even if they're Mother Theresa, some of us think that we in
business could provide some corporate altruism by covering the costs
of the non-commercial areas as well as the commercial ones.  That
would be my recommendation - what does everyone else think?  And if
you agree, how do we set it up so that it works?

>How exactly do you see existance of biz.au and tm.au resolving
problems in any meaningful way?

Its open to discussion.  For example, my company has one company
name but thousands of products and many trademark brand names.  We
run major marketing campaigns and an effective solution could be for
us to register our brands in .tm.au and use those names in
highlighting www addresses to the public.

>If it takes spending $100 to become able to 'speak' to ADNA, I
suppose I can decide to do that, but its a rather sorry day for the
Internet.

If it took $100 to be able to 'speak' to ADNA, I'd agree with you.
Fortunately it doesn't.  There are multiple avenues for
communication to & from ADNA, including the ADNA proposals being
posted to public forums like this one, plus the fact that ADNA
members are non-profit organisations which are made up of members
who are involved in the internet, and those members have additional
levels of communication with ADNA through their representative
organisation.

Regards, Mark


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*  Message From : HUGHES, MARK          *
*  Location     : AUSTRALIA-CCA HDQ     *
*  KOMAIL ID    : N17503  (CCAMCQN1)    *
*  Date and Time: 06/27/97  14:38:16    *
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