At 11:26 PM 13/12/2001 +1100, Adrian Stephan wrote:

>In my
>view, and I could be wrong, there is some sort of anti-competitive monopoly
>given to auDA by someone over a public facility that happens to end in an
>address .au.

By your analogy with the post, I could go to the land registry and register
my ownership of a piece of turf you think you own. We both advertise the same
address, and then we argue over the ownership of the incoming messages.

For precisely the same reason that there is one authoritative land titles
registry (in Australia, one for each state), there should be one .com.au 
registry
database.

The fact that you disagree with policies for what names should be 
registered does
not diminish the need for auDA. The fact that some say auDA should not *have*
policies for names, just first-come-first-served, does not diminish the need
for auDA.

And in fact Australia Post *do* have a monopoly on the delivery of standard
letters. The government has proposed abolishing the monopoly but hasn't got
it past Labor and Democrats in the Senate. It is argued by some that this
is so they can offer the service at the same flat 45c price everywhere. See
for example http://www.auspost.com.au/mediacentre/index.asp?link_id=4.21

Cheers

Paul Foxworthy


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