Hi Ian

Thanks for your nice reply.  Are you really another person up at 4:40 am?

> I'm glad you're running for the board, at least as a counter to some of
> the more outrageously selfserving.  If I were a member I'd vote for you,
> but I was very broke around that deadline.

Thanks for your support but it's OK, really.  The Board is broken up into two
classes, supply (those selling domain names) and demand (those buying domain
names).  Most candidates are naturally in the supply class.

Perhaps fortunately, I nominated for the "demand" class. And, as there is one
vacant Board seat for "demand" and one candidate for it, I expect to get
elected
unopposed.  In other words, I've been advised it's pretty much a formality.

> As my own attempt to bring up issues regarding the mooted projecting of
> the same business-oriented identification and thus registration rules as
> apply to {com,net}.au, onto eg {org,asn}.au, drew zero response, I'm not
> encouraged to labour the point any further, nor really to write a formal
> submission that's seeming futile, maybe even luddite, in the face of the
> 'new internet' defined purely by dollar power that's clearly emerging.

I find that a very interesting issue.  In fact, I see that a much more
interesting point than even you might think.  For me it goes right to to the
heart of the whole domain name system in Australia.

That is the Top Level Domain is .au.  That's Robert Elz.   On 15 Nov 1999, he
delegated full authority for the .com.au namespace to auDA.  The .com.au
namespace is a subset of the total.au namespace (the "Domain").

Apart from Robert's actual letter of delegation, it is interesting to read the
Framework for Domain Delegation and Licensing at:

                    http://www.auda.org.au/domain-framework.html

The strategic question, then, is how the AU namespace is to be divided.  The
long-term goal is for auDA to take over from Robert Elz.  If the AU domain is
to be sliced into parts and doled out as Second Level Domains (2LDs) then the
real issue becomes:

           What authority has auDA to manage the AU namespace?

>From that you can then start asking whether, and to what extent, the policy
should be consistent across the various second level domains such as .asn.au.

Best regards
Patrick Corliss