Adrian Chadd poses a question for further deliberation: "Here's one more for
you - if you "owned" au.com, what would you do with it?" (snip)

Presumably a hypothetical...

Exactly the same things as are done with every other TLD owned by members of
this list... The domain would be used to promote a business, a product, or a
service.

However I doubt that any members of this mostly technical-by-nature
discussion list would consider promoting sub-domains under a (whatever).com
as a TLD in its own right. Not only would this be a misrepresentation, it
would also be decidedly against the very purpose of the AuDA forum.

Perhaps it's pertinent to point-out that this list was constructed for the
sole purpose of furthering the use and development of the .au namespace.
AuDA intends to educate the Australian public in Domain related issues, and
surely it is our role (as list members, domain administrators and
end-users), to aid in this education and ensure the public are not
misinformed. Permit me to suggest that our aim is to foster informed
decisions by the general public regarding the use of the Domain Name System.

So another hypothetical...

What if... a member of the group purporting to support the .au namespace was
actually promoting an inferior product as an equal competitor?

Should we support this person and their product? - Is this in the best
interests of .au administration?

Would this person have a conflict of interest were they to actually involve
themselves in .au administration? (Does the success of .au offer them with a
potential for financial gain, or a potential for financial loss?)

What if, after repeated requests, this person continued to promote an
inferior product as an equal competitor (i.e. an ISP selling a 28800 modem
connection as "broadband") what action should other ISP's take? - Or is this
all best left to the court of public opinion, driven by simply extending
public awareness and increasing the knowledge of the systems we all rely
upon? (in other words, discussing the issue such as we are doing).

Lastly, does business ethics have a place in .au administration or not?

Don Cameron


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