>Geoff does not receive any money for looking after edu.au or gov.au.
>In fact through AUNIC, Geoff (and/or his employer) are providing services 
>which are used for com.au.  (The equivalent in the USA is run by InterNIC,
>and presumably part of the US$35/year they charge for domain names covers
>maintenance of their whois database.)

Technically Telstra doesn't own AUNIC. (At least that's what the offical -
historic - line is/was.)  So AUNIC has nothing in theory to do with
Telstra, unless that has also changed and I haven't heard.

To which, this brings some very serious questions forward, that I think
shoudl be refered to the ACCC.  But lets assume Geoff is AUNIC in his spare
(??) time.

In this case, your mostly correct.  Geoff receives no financial reward or
contribution for this administration.

Much the same way the AVCC received no reward or financial contribution for
MUNNARI.OZ.AU and it's other hosted DNS servers, providing resolution for
the AU domain.

Perhaps - being that these servers are located in Melbourne Uni, and that
Melb Uni is in fact a major (was??) shareholder of MIT, there is some
consolidated revenue being returned, but this doesn't show at the AVCC book
level.

>A more appropriate question about edu.au/gov.au would be:
>	If it ain't broke, why try to "fix" it?

Because it needs someone - human - to administer it and make decisions at
the basis level about registrations.  Someone (probably Geoff) still hits
the "acknowledge" key to allow a registration to go through.

>Unless of course someone can point to a number of applicants who
>meet the criteria for edu.au/gov.au and are having trouble (eg: long
>delays, spurious rejections) through no fault of their own.

Plenty of them.  And in reality it' no fault of Geoff's either.  It's just
that Geoff doesn't have the free time he use to, from both a professional
and personal perspective.



THE DOMAIN NAME HANDBOOK                   http://www.domainhandbook.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
The advice offered in this email is not considered professional advice,
or it would be accompanied by an invoice. No permission is granted for 
republication of comments, without written consent.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Business Development, Technology Domain Registration and Network Advisory
Telstra Convey Member			  AURSC    http://www.aursc.ah.net
Adam Todd                                 Personal http://adamtodd.ah.net  
at§aus  or  [email protected]				   http://adam.says.sheesh
Phone +61 2 9729 0565                     Network  http://www.ah.net
AU Internet News  		http://www.ah.net/lists/lwgate/INTERNET/
AU Internet User Mail List	http://www.ah.net/lists/lwgate/OZ-USER/