] Quoting Mark Hughes on Saturday March 02, 2002:
] | I believe that for old domains created before AUNIC existed, the creation
] | date is the date the record was added into AUNIC, not the date the domain
] | name was created.

No, that's not it.
 
The creation date field was added to AUNIC in the late 1990s.  Before
that, domains just had a "Last Updated" field.

The initial software at AUNIC to implement this was a bit simple minded.
If you modified a domain which had an "Updated" date but not a "Created"
date, then it would assume the old "Updated" date was in fact the
"Created" date, and add a new "Created" field accordingly.  Which
would be fine if the domain wasn't modified after being created...

] There are a few counter examples, though. news.com.au, cyber.com.au, and
] travel.com.au somehow are stamped with 19930101 as their creation dates.
] I can only assume these dates were added more recently as an estimate.

1-Jan-93 is sort of a meta-date which really just means "very old"
(usually pre-1993).  It's a bit like African tribes which was used
to count "one, two, three, many".

] However, domains like connect.com.au were around in 1993 but have not
] been similarly adjusted.

Yes, I remember connect.com.au had that domain before 1993.

] | As a proportion of the total number of domains, the ones created before say
] | 1996, would be small.
] 
] Agreed. But as per David's point, it is futile using the dates to judge
] which policy the domain name is grandfathered under. The contentious
] domains that would have been registered under old policies have
] unreliable dates.

If there is a creation date for a domain in AUNIC you can be confident
that the domain was created on or before that date (not after).

For example, if there is a Created date before Oct 1996 on a com.au
domain, then you can be confident that the domain name was registered
prior to Melbourne IT becoming involved in registration.

__________________________________________________________________________
 David Keegel <djk&#167;cyber.com.au>  URL: http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/
Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management