In reference to various correspondence, most lately to Joshua Rowe's
posting regarding an ING 'Renewal Advice' that must surely be of
interest to the ACCC (despite rumoured buck-passing back to AuDA), viz:

 http://joshrowe.com/ing01.jpg
 http://joshrowe.com/ing02.jpg

On Tue, 2 Oct 2001, Bruce Tonkin wrote:

[..]

 > In general terms the legislation governing business practices is the Trade
 > Practices Act that applies to all industries.  The ACCC is responsible for
 > monitoring compliance with this act and investigating complaints of
 > consumers that relate to the Act.  To date it appears that the ACCC has
 > found limited instances of abuse by domain name retailers with respect to
 > the Act - or maybe some retailers have changed their practices after
 > warnings and the matter has not proceeded to court.  Of course an individual
 > company can take action against another company under the Trade Practices
 > Act - but no companies to my knowledge have taken that step in the domain
 > name industry in Australia.
 > 
 > The approach that has often been suggested by this list is for Melbourne IT
 > itself to take action against its resellers.  However this also has
 > problems.  Firstly Melbourne IT provides DNS registry services to all domain
 > name retailers in ".com.au", and is itself a domain name retailer.  It is
 > difficult to be both the umpire and a player, and appear impartial.
 > Melbourne IT itself could be seen to be acting in a manner contrary to the
 > Trade Practices Act.

I think you've here made a VERY good case as to why there is fundamental
conflict of interest being both a registrar and a domain name retailer,
the umpire and a player as you say, and why this should not be allowed
to happen in the future - or at all, given expiry of current contracts.

 > The action Melbourne IT has taken includes: 
 > � obtained undertakings in relation to potential infringement of trademarks
 > and passing off
 > � has called on auda and the ACCC to take action and suggested they release
 > and publicise consumer warnings (which they did)
 > � has cooperated with the ACCC in their investigations 
 > � has redrafted its own renewal notices to carry consumer warnings 
 > � has lobbied government and made public comments arguing for a code of
 > practice 
 > � has called on the Privacy Commissioner to consider the specific
 > regulations  in the light of these practices

Has any of this been effective against the clearly ongoing (at least)
misleading sort of practices illustrated by the URLs Josh gave above? 

 > There have been two other main alternatives, to the Trade Practices Act and
 > the ACCC:

Sure, assuming AuDA - or someone? - cannot have the existing laws and
Consumer Protection regulations enforced, it might have to come to such 
unpallatable bureaucratic nightmares.  But are we sure they've really
been tried, and if so, exactly what prevents them from being effective?

Cheers, Ian

[..]

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