At 02:55 1/10/00 +1000, you wrote:
>anthony white wrote:
>
> > check out www.audomains.com for the latest.
>
>You'll notice they're trying to sell .com.au names contrary to the policy.
>There's a big risk in doing that, I would have thought.
>
>Regards
>Patrick Corliss

Actually INA has a way of allowing "selling" which is presumably official 
enough as they have formal documents and application forms to support it. 
This is the "terminate and re-apply" process. Essentially, company A that 
currently holds the name asks them to cancel the license, and in the same 
breath company B applies for the same name. Obviously company B must meet 
all the usual com.au allocation/application terms such as having a suitable 
business or company name.

This is only processed offline (paper based forms) and is done manually, 
presumably to ensure both things happen at the same moment.

The only bad news is there is still a disclaimer on the top of the first 
page that essentially says they don't guarantee someone else won't snap up 
the name midway through the process :-( Not good news when our clients have 
just agreed to pay a third party a sizable sum for a particular name and 
then have to agree that they may be throwing it all down the drain.

And for those completely opposed to selling names at all, consider also the 
case of (fictional) character "Fred Smith Antiques" who is a sole trader 
with a small business and the name "fredsmithantiques.com.au". He has built 
up a thriving online presence over the years and incorporates and becomes 
"Fred Smith Antiques Pty Ltd" and on his accountants advise he cancels the 
business name registration, maintaining just the company. But as the domain 
name is licensed to the business name, technically the domain can now be 
revoked as the business name (license holder) doesn't exist any more. So he 
really needs to sell the name to the new company entity in order to keep 
using it - even though essentially there is no change in use in most senses 
of the word.

I believe there needs to be a zero risk option for people in this position 
to ensure they keep their established names and do not have to face any 
risk of losing them. The difficulty with picking out this particular case 
is that there's no way for the registrar to conclusively tell whether it's 
essentially a change in the legal structure of the business like this, or 
an actual sale to an unrelated party. Ensure the "old" owner is a 
shareholder or director of the new company? I'm sure that would be worked 
around in the same way as some of the current policies are worked around - 
"we'll buy your domain name from you and here's your token 1 share out of 
the 10,000,000 on issue so that the registrar sees this as a related party 
transaction not a third party, and we make sure we get the rights to the 
name we're paying for..."

Maybe the current "terminate and re-apply" process actually is zero risk, 
but it certainly doesn't read that way from the disclaimer. But maybe 
that's INA covering themselves just in case... If anyone (especially 
someone from INA) can shed some further facts on the process I'd appreciate 
it. Whatever one thinks of selling of com.au names generally, I think 
everyone should agree that people like the "fredsmithantiques.com.au" 
example should have a way to go through the above scenario in complete 
confidence.

Regards,
JS