Robert Elz wrote:
>     From:        Rick Welykochy <rick&#167;dot.net.au>
>   | An enquiry to Mel.I.T. informed me of some strange rule
>   | that allows a natural person to obtain a domain name in
>   | .com.au if they have demonstrated they have been tradining
>   | under that name. In the above case I would assume D.S.Waldron
>   | demonstrated that he was trading as "Dan" but without an RBN.
> 
> This is quite old, and isn't really a "strange" rule.   com.au is
> basically for commercial operations, so that is a primary criteria.
> 
> Then the next basic principal is that commercial operations should
> register under their own names - for an individual, that's the person's
> name, for a partnership, it is the list of names (or abbreviated list
> when it is long) and for a company it is the company name.
> 
> Then there's the added complication that a lot of businesses prefer to
> trade under some other name.   Commercial law allows that, but requires
> the name be registered (so others can locate the actual entity using the
> trading name).   The com.au policy follows that, and allows an organisation
> to use their registered trading name as the basis for the domain name.
> 
> And last, since people's, and company, names are typically much longer
> than is normally desireable for a domain name, and also often contain
> characters that are not legal (or at least, not sane) in a domain name
> (like space), so domain names are allowed to be derived from the entity's
> legal, or trading, name, they don't have to be an exact match.

Thanks for the clear and rather unambiguous response, kre.

Given the above, which isn't so hard to understand, and hardly
deserving of the draconian criticism seen on this and other lists,
I fail to comprehend why the AlterNIC'ers and others constantly
deride the .com.au rules. Has anyone seen the mess within .com?

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 _/  Richard Welykochy                 mailto:rick&#167;dot.net.au
_/  Dot Communications Ltd             http://www.dot.net.au/world
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