I agree with John and suggest the info.au 2LD for Australia's first 
open domain space, used as an information gateway (4.3).


At 12:07 PM -0500 25/11/00, John Davidson wrote:
>In this message I wanted to raise a few points.
>
>First, it seems to me that the problem with the .au domain is that there is
>no open second level .au domain that is not subject to the various
>restrictions imposed on the others - .com.au, .asn.au, org.au etc.

.info.au already exists but has restrictions on use. It can be made 
an open space.  The word INFO is about as generic as you can get when 
trying to set up a space which can cater for cpa.info.au as well as 
georgebray.info.au and beef.info.au.

The .info.au space can also cover geographically named information 
resources.  nsw.info.au

[..]

Yes, the existing .com.au, .gov.au spaces have value for their 
validation of the information publisher's credentials. It should be 
enhanced (see below).

>The problem
>that they ignored is that have effectively made the .au domain name space
>closed. I see no policy reason why people shouldn't be able to register any
>domain name they want (leaving aside the issue of obscene, geographic or
>generic names). The issue is on what second level domain should these
>domains be hosted.

Agreed.     *.info.au


>It seems that the new top level domains that ICANN has recently accepted
>will flow on to the .au domain such that there will be .biz.au, .name.au
>etc. This may alleviate some of the existing problems, but I guess that
>depends how these are administered ie. what rules will be applied. I can
>still foresee some sitauations where people/organisations will be excluded
>from registering.


ICANN's .info gTLD will be open from day one.  Australia should at 
least have one open parallel domain with the gTLD.

[...]

Agreed, there is no sense in restricting any entity to one domain name.

Additionally, the value of the .com.au domain name should be enhanced 
by the ATO or some other authority.  How about a PKI certificate with 
my .com.au registration eh?


>Finally, for what its worth - I think the gateway suggestion in the report
>is a great idea. Altough this obviously depends on whether you consider
>domains as a directory or phone number, I think it would be great for the
>user to be able to key in realestate.com.au and go to a portal including all
>Aussie real estate agents and associated sites (such as conveyancers or
>lawyers etc).

WhatEverYouWant.info.au

	George

-- 
George Bray
http://www.linkalarm.com
LinkAlarm> Online Web Site Quality Assurance Service