Hi Nick.  The point that needs to be borne in mind here is that it's not the
name per se.  A business invests huge amounts of time and money in
developing and increasing the value of a name.  Brand recognition and all
that.

That increase in value is, to all intents and purposes, capital gain for the
name's owner.  What I've described in my post is a fairly common and
legitimate business scenario, in which current (and new?) policy can have
the effect of arbitrarily confiscating that capital gain.

So in effect, we're going to the market place and telling customers that
they can have this wonderful asset called a domain name, but there are no
guarantees that they'll be able to keep it.  We're also telling our
customers that they should register a domain name to prevent others from
getting in first - but in the fine print, we're also telling them that if
they do so, we might just take it away if we change our mind on policy or if
their circumstances change.

I can see my clients feeling really secure on this one!

Ron Stark


-----Original Message-----
From: Nick Andrew [mailto:nick§zeta.org.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 28 November 2001 9:53 PM
To: dns§auda.org.au
Subject: Re: [DNS] Retention of domain name


On Wed, Nov 28, 2001 at 08:58:47PM +1100, Ron Stark wrote:
> Since my last posting, I have received confirmation that even under the
> current policy, if I change my company name (a fairly common occurrence, I
> should think), I actually lose my rights to my original domain name.

Imagine if T$ forced you to change your telephone number as well.
I think the above analogy correctly and succinctly sums up the issue.

> The only way I can keep the name to stop the registrar from giving what's
> indisputably mine to another entity is to register a separate business
name
> or trade mark [...]

You may believe it's indisputably yours, but the policy does not
recognise that right. I think that's a flaw in the policy.

IIRC the com.au policy under kre was that a domain, once registered,
could remain with the current owner despite the domain (or the owner)
not complying with subsequent revisions of the policy. So, to give an
example, if news.com.au was registered before "no generic names" became
part of the policy, the registration would not be invalidated on the
addition of the generic names clause into the policy.

> And that too may be a problem, because I'm not sure (I stand to be
corrected
> in this) that policy allows domain names to be transferred to a new owner.

They have to buy the business - or business name, assuming that is
possible.

> Either that, or I have to register a new domain name as a derivation of my
> new company name, which also may be not available, because somebody with a
> similar business name in another State may already have the domain name I
> need.  And the only reason I would need it in the first place is because I
> had to forfeit what I already rightfully owned.  Then I would have to
begin
> again to build brand and market awareness.

It's a lot of rules and compliance costs to you, and a lot of
implementation costs (verification and enforcement) to the
registrar. Somebody tell me again what was so bad about "open
slather" in com.au ?

> I am informed that the new policy will allow "close association with the
> domain name" to be a criterion to retain it [...]

That addresses one of my concerns, i.e. that prior well-established use
will be considered. Case in point, there's a certain domain "zeta.org.au"
which is now owned by Pacific Internet (trading as Zeta, if that helps),
which was registered in 1994 or thereabouts, and which quite likely
does _not_ comply with the current rules for org.au. I would hate to
see that registration become invalid, and so would the several thousand
users who rely on it for their email address.

Nick.

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