Leni wrote:

>> 2.2 DNAs must pay annual renewal fees as set from time to time by
>> ADNA.  The fee for 1997/1998 is set at  $.25c per .com.au domain
>> name registered by the DNA.

>ADNA would have made 2000 * .25 = $500 last month from .com.au.
>Seems like it's a reasonable amount for for administration but not
>enough to carry out any megalomaniacal plans.

That was the intention.  The fees should be the minimal necessary to
deliver a reliable & equitable system.  The fee schedule for DNAs in
domains for non-profit organisations should be $0 application fee
and $0 renewal, in my opinion - which means all the ADNA operations
would be funded by levies on commercial organisations.

>>5.2 INCLUSIONS

>> Any legal entity which is a commercial entity that trades in
>> Australia can register a COM.AU domain name.  For the purposes of
>> this policy a commercial entity is considered to be one that
>> exists to make a profit.  Examples include companies, statutory
>> corporations or authorities, incorporated associations,
>> partnerships and sole traders.

>There must be dozens of special cases here.  Can it be simplified
>to become deterministic: eg. Any legal entity that operates in
>Australia that is not a non-profit organisation under the tax code?

For a 2LD such as .com.au, I'm not sure its really worth trying to
exclude certain organisations if they really want to be there.  My
suggested solution would be to write the policy to include a
statement recommending that specific organsations use more
appropriate 2LDs (eg. .edu.au for schools, etc), and include that
statement on the application by users for a .com.au domain name.  If
we try and make it mandatory that certain organisations must be
excluded from .com.au, then we must develop an objective criteria
that can easily be checked by DNAs.

I think this is different from other 2LDs including those for
education, government, non-profit organisations, etc, where I think
there is a benefit in excluding inappropriate organisations from the
2LDs.  I have a problem with for-profit companies passing themselves
off as a charity or a government department, but I have no concern
with a school being in .com.au if it really wants to be there.

>> 5.4.6 Not be a generic word describing products (goods or
>> services), industries, industry sectors, or organisations.
>> Examples of unacceptable domain names include: beer (product),
>> banking (industry), industrial (industry), company (organisation
>> type).  Generic phrases comprising of two or more generic words
>> are allowed.

>This is a weak spot in terms of making the rules deterministic and
>automating it might be non-trivial.  Seems like one would need to
>start with a dictionary of words and then add some sort of
>algorithm for plurals, tenses, conjugation and then it still
>wouldn't be as good as a human.  Perhaps we could just agree on the
>dictionary?
I quite agree with your point.  There are two problems with using
subjective criteria rather than objective criteria:

Firstly, it leaves any DNA wide open legal hassles and expense from
complaints of the "why won't you approve 'banking.com.au' when
you've approved 'tarandfeathering.com.au' - they're both industries"
sort.

Secondly, for any 2LD with mulitple DNAs, how on earth can the two
DNAs apply a subjective criteria consistently?

That said, I kinda like the objective of section 5.4.6 which is to
try and stop one for-profit organisation cornering the market on a
name like 'banking.com.au' or 'beer.com.au'.  If we're going to keep
this then I think we need an external list as the objective
criteria.  Something like the list of industries & products used for
classification by the Bureau of Statistics for example?

Regards, Mark


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*  Message From : HUGHES, MARK          *
*  Location     : AUSTRALIA-CCA HDQ     *
*  KOMAIL ID    : N17503  (CCAMCQN1)    *
*  Date and Time: 08/07/97  16:15:25    *
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