On Thu, Dec 20, 2001, Mike Russell wrote:

> Surely an open transparent process, more representative of all 
> stake-holders is in order.
> As a member of AUDA, I want the process to be one that returns the 
> highest monetary gain to AUDA.
> Very simple and fair to all.

Uhm, the AuDA doesn't exist to make money. It exists to organise
the .au namespace and make policies based on panel input.
I personally hope its aims are not to maximise its revenue at
any expense, and I also hold the personal view that maximising revenue
isn't "simple and fair to all".

That said, the AuDA does require funding, both for management and
the projects it has publicily stated it will embark upon.

Ok, thats out of the way. Back to the actual thread at hand.

If the auction (which personally I don't agree with, but thats another
issue) is open to everyone, then you'll see the following happen:

* lots of companies with a wad of cash will run out and
  register business names _immediately_ that make it qualify, and
* these companies will throw wads of cash at the auction, winning
  a whole sleuth of these "generic names" (a)
* instead of the names being owned by lots of people, they'll
  be owned by a few large companies
*
* profit

So, do you think its fair that companies that _already_ existed
with a company/trading name that qualifies them for the above
(which hopefully includes the people who originally asked for
these "generic" domains) should compete with last minute ditches
by companies who will obviously have more cash to throw around?




Adrian

(a) arguable in this economic climate, but still.

-- 
Adrian Chadd			"The first rule of optimisation:
<adrian&#167;creative.net.au>	  Don't do it, and at least don't
				    do it yet." -- Stefan Axelsson