> In the case of id.au, a cheaper price will have an impact. The ability
> to get a 'life-long' (in reality domain name comes up for license for
> every 2 years) would be appealing in this case and even more appealing
> if the price is 'affordable'.

Cheaper price & permanent address / email has been available to individuals
for yonks.  Just register your own personal domain name in a global TLD such
as .com, .net, .org.

To support an assertion that making id.au available cheaply will
automatically create demand, one would have to have some evidence that  a
third level domain under id.au is going to be more attractive than a second
level domain under .com, .net, or .org.  If anyone thinks they have any such
evidence (meaning 'evidence', as different from 'speculation', or 'hope'),
I'd be interested in seeing it.



> Consider the shear novelty factor of having john§smith.id.au.

Of course, consumers aren't going to be able to have firstname§surname.id.au
(with very rare exceptions) because the vast majority of people have the
same surname as other people.  So once the first 10,000 or so id.au domain
names are registered, the other 19,000,000 consumers will have to settle for
something else.



There are two advantages of a gTLD over id.au for personal domain names.

1. You get to register at the second level, rather than at the third level.
2. There are no artificial restrictions on what you can have.

By point 2 I'm referring to the restrictions that say your id.au domain name
must equal, be a contraction of, or be derived from or include one or more
words from, the Registrant's personal name.




So....................
if we take a completely random example :)

Cyrille Lefevre could apply for cyrille.id.au, or lefevre.id.au, but not for
fish.id.au or gingerfish.id.au, even if ginger fish is what he prefers to
use as his email & identity on the internet.

I know lots of people who use words other than their own name for their
personal domain names.  One I know uses the name of the best horse he ever
rode (he was a jockey 20 years ago).  Domain names are an opportunity for
people to create their own identity from scratch - I'm not at all convinced
that everyone wants a web address/email address equivalent, or even close
to, to their own name.

I'm damned if I know why id.au has these restrictions.  Yeah, I know I sound
like a broken record when I point out yet again how poor was  the report of
the Name Policy Panel that came up with this stuff.  But I'm gonna do it
anyway :)



Regards, Mark

Mark Hughes
Effective Business Applications Pty Ltd
effectivebusiness§pplications.com.au
www.pplications.com.au
+61 4 1374 3959