Two eternal truths of DNS:

	short ones are better.
	all the good ones are taken.

There are contra-indications in both cases mind you, although the
norwegian who posts as maybe§yes.no has a pretty fine FQDN.

The proposals for tm.au and biz.au it seems to me are going to complicate
anybodys expectations of what a 'plausible' name can be, and also
introduce the thorny problems of rogue sights like micros0ft.biz.au being
taken seriously by the clueless.

Since the top-level domain .COM has around 1 million entries I really can't
see why there is such a noise being made about the need for alternates
to .com.au at this time. 

It had some validity as a mechanism to achieve competition to a single DNA
com.au, but that would seem to be a vanishing problem.

If however, the policy of a tm.au is to use some external agency who can
adjudicate over Australian trademarks, and thus like com.au the essential
costpoints become facilities managing the transferrance of ownership and
delegation as things move around, I can't say I have deep seated objections
but like any other proposal at the 2LD level:

	it doesn't need to be rushed
	it needs wide discussion
	the policy implications need to be worked out

(actually, I take that 1million .com on trust. Whats the authoritative figure
 and am I right in thinking its at least one order of magnitude bigger than
 .com.au? NSI may be coming in for some complaint, but really in context I
 think they do a better job than many allow for. Just as M-IT do in fact.)


-George

--
George Michaelson         |  connect.com.au pty/ltd
Email: ggm§connect.com.au |  c/o AAPT,
Phone: +61 7 3834 9976    |  level 8, the Riverside Centre,
  Fax: +61 7 3834 9908    |  123 Eagle St, Brisbane QLD 4000