The Chairs of the DNS Forum, Richard Cousins and Luke Carruthers,
agreed to post their notes of the meeting on the IIA site and the dns
list by today, so attendees could use them as a basis of comments from
their own organisations to submit to the site soliciting responses on
the Green Paper (http://www.ntia.doc.gov/).  

This *must* happen today, as 23rd March is the cutoff date for comments.

In the absence of their notes here is a summary from my point-of-view,
and from the notes of ISOC-AU director Greg Watson.  This is not the 
official version :-)

Kate Lance


DNS Forum, Melbourne, 20 March 1998
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Attended by around 20 people: representatives of NOIE, ISOC-AU, WAIA,
IIA, ADNA; ISPs Connect, Zip, CIA; CORE registrars Moniker and M-IT;
and a few others whose details I didn't catch.

o  There was unanimous agreement that the registries for TLDs should be
   operated as non-profit, public-trust organisations;

o  the exact number and area of responsibilities for the registries are
   a matter for Internet self-governance;

o  registrars are the organisations for which for-profit competition 
   is appropriate;

o  there was support for a so-called "light touch" approach, with minimal 
   legislative backing, and the US Government was probably the appropriate 
   jurisdiction for the legislation (seen as key to gaining US agreement).

o  policy should rest with an international organisation and Australia
   should be involved, possibly on a UN/UN Security-Council model for 
   international involvement;

o  The "new IANA" was seen as the appropriate international organisation,
   with policy responsibility for protocol numbers, IP addresses, domain 
   names and the root server system, see:
       http://www.iana.org/iana/iana-plan-980113.txt

o  An industry self-regulatory model, with minimal government intervention, 
   was seen as the most appropriate model; and

o  a good example of that model is the two-year, international cooperative 
   effort that resulted in the POC/PAB/CORE/WIPO agreements, which have 
   already completed the work needed to transition the existing system. 

Many of these points are also the conclusions of the ISOC response to the
Green Paper, see http://www.isoc.org/internet/news/greenpaper.shtml

A position paper is expected to be written based upon this, to be
released around the time (late April) that the Australian government
will be sending their comments to the US government.