Kate,

>Mark Hughes replied:
>>  3. Development of Registrar Licence Conditions under
>>  which multiple Registrars would operate.  Draft document
>>  is available at:
>ADNA don't have the authority to license anyone to do anything.

Kate, I think it's about time this issue of ADNA's authority was
laid to rest.  For the record:

For ADNA to achieve anything such as enabling competition between
Registrars in an Australian SLD, the existing Registrar for that
SLD would have to give up some rights that they are currently
excercising.  Those rights include:

a) the fact that each Registrar currently has a monopoly over
their SLD.
b) the fact that in actual practice, each Registrar is excercising
authority to make / implement rules relating to how that SLD
operates.

Let us be quite clear from the start, that NO existing Registrar,
including those that publicly support ADNA, and those that publicly
don't support ADNA, will agree to giving up some of their
existing powers to ADNA unless that Registrar is confident
that the overall structure of ADNA is satisfactory and that the
detailed proposals of ADNA, such as 'Registrar License Conditions'
and policy for a specific SLD, etc, are acceptable to that
Registrar.

Every Australian Registrar, regardless of whether they publicly
support the ADNA process or not, is in EXACTLY the same boat.

Lets take Melbourne IT as an example.  They are publicly
supporting the ADNA process, have contributed resources to
ADNA, and their employees have given considerable time and
energy to various discussions and have provided much feedback
on many of the proposals.

But (and I have not discussed this directly with Peter Gerrand
but I'm confident of my prediction), I am absolutely
confident that Melbourne IT will not make substantive
changes like passing ultimate authority for
.com.au policy to ADNA, or implementing multiple Registrars
in .com.au unless they are 'comfortable' with high level
issues such as ADNA structure as well as lower level issues
like how Registrar Licences are issued and how the .com.au
policy is determined.

They have 40,000 customers - they are not going to jeopardise
those customer's service by ceding part of their authority
to another entity unless Melb. IT is happy with all the
details of that other entity.

Consider connect.com and .net.au.  They have not been an
active part of ADNA to date.  But they are in the identical
position to Melbourne IT.  I'm confident connect.com will
not cede part of their authority unless they are completely
'comfortable' with what is being proposed.  They have thousands
of customers too, and connect.com would have to be a
complete bunch of ninnys to jeopardise their customer's service
by moving to something before they felt it was acceptable.  And I
for one am confident that they are not a complete bunch of ninnys.

Now look at all the other existing Registrars.  Funnily enough,
they are all in exactly the same boat.  They won't actually
cede any authority to ADNA until the processes of ADNA
are withing their comfort zone.


Now, we do have a small but real issue - the comfort zones of
each of the Registrars are going to be different.  That
means there are only two options:

1. Existing Registrars make compromises at some points.
2. We keep the existing fragmented situation.


Some things that ADNA can do are:

Develop a process that might enable competition between
Registrars.  I covered that in my last posting.

Develop draft documents such as 'Registrar Licence
Conditions', and SLD policies.  That is in progress now.

If these things, SRS software, etc are all developed,
and ADNA then proposes that multiple Registrars
start operation in .pr.au subject to those publicly
developed policies, and kre does not approve the
creation of .pr.au with competition between Registrars,
well, so be it, then it won't happen.

Suppose we now take some time to examine what
happens then.  The existing Registrars will continue
with their monopolies.  If that is your
objective say so.

As the representative of a non-profit user group
made up of about 1000 main stream Australian
businesses, I'm on the record as supporting
competition between Registrars.

I quite happily conceed that everything about
ADNA, from the high level stuff (M and A) to
low level stuff (documentation) can be
improved upon.

But if you think ADNA hasn't done much to improve
the existing state of affairs, lets be absolutely
clear that its done a helluva lot more than
another organisation of which I am also a member
 - ISOC-AU!

My opinion is that some of ADNA's omissions of
communication could easily be misconstrued as
a deliberate attempt to disregard and ignore
other parties.

My opinion is also that the poor standard and
general intellectual shoddyness of submissions
from ISOC-AU could easily be misconstrued as an
indication that ISCO-AU had no real intention
of providing meaningful input and was just
trying to muddy the waters in resentment
of the concept that any other entity might have
a role to play in representing users of the internet.

I give the benefit of the doubt to both organisations.

For the record, Kate, could you please post to this
list server tomorrow:

1. The ISOC-AU process to enable competition between
   Registrars
2. The ISOC-AU proposed Registrar Licensing Conditions
3. The ISOC-AU proposed policy document for at least
   one SLD in .au, including:
a) What type of entities can get names in the SLD
b) What names will and won't be approved in the SLD
c) Code of Practice
etc.
4. The ISOC-AU proposal to meet requirements of Users
for domain names for sites for products and services.

I do expect to see those ISOC-AU proposals on this list
server tomorrow, Kate.

Regards, Mark