On Sun, 22 Sep 2002, James Fiander wrote:

> If you do not renew your driver's licence, and you drive and are pinged for
> being an unlicenced driver, that's your responsibility. Not the RTA's; and
> not the police force's. Even if you're not aware of it - it's still your
> responsibility.
> 
> BUT... the RTA does send you a letter when your licence is up for renewal...
> and even renewal papers for your car registration... An mostly if your rego
> is out by a few days the police will allow you to continue driving... and
> deem it as a reminding/wake up call...

According to the law; if you drive in such a fashion (unlicenced) you get 
pinged. It's not the Police's responsibility to let you off because you 
didn't know; nor is it the RTA's responsibility to send you a renewal. 
It's *your* responsibility to ensure that you're licenced.

> I have just experienced this problem with a client of mine... they didn't
> not know when their domain was up for renewal... I have no way of finding

So, they didn't know when it was due to be renewed - not good, but not
AusRegistry/auDA/RegistrarX's fault. 

> website two days before their domain went down... when they couldn't resolve
> their dns and their website went down.. they immediately suspected that our
> service had gone down... which was quickly followed by several heated
> telephone calls to my office.. The client in my case was never told what

Yes, your problem to deal with. Yes, easy to isolate the fault and rectify. 
Ausregistry/auDA/RegistrarX's fault ? no. 

> Should they have known when their licence expired? Yes
> 
> Should they be punished with loss of access to their domain? Yes
> 
> Should the domain have been unregistered allowing others to register it? A
> resounding NO! They should have a facility to put it in a temporary Holding
> zone... while the licencee is contacted!

Should they be contacted ? Probably. By AusRegistry/auDA ? no. IMO requiring
this function at such a base level would add significant cost to the 
already-overpriced DNS registration system in .au.

I would certainly support a suggestion to AusRegistry/auDA that *any* 
deregistered .au domain be subject to a 'cooling-off' period where it was 
impossible to be registered by anyone else, though. I can't see how this 
automated cooling-off would add significant cost to the process.

Regards,

Saliya