Hello All,

I have seen a few postings about the difficulty of confirming the expiry
date from WHOIS.

The steps are as follows:

(1) Check WHOIS entry on http://whois.ausregistry.com.au

(2) To obtain expiry date:
 (i) contact the listed registrant contact who should have this information
 (ii) if the listed registrant contact does not have this information, the
listed registrant contact should contact the registrar listed in the WHOIS
entry
 (iii) if the listed registrant contact is inaccurate, contact the registrar
for the procedure for updating the registrant contact entry.  

The WHOIS provides all the information necessary to legitimately obtain the
expiry date.

I am not aware of too many registration environments where the expiry date
is made publicly available.  e.g the expiry of my drivers licence is not
available publicly.  One advantage of a drivers licence is that the expiry
date is printed on the licence.  In future as domain name registration
certificates are provided, more registrants will have easy access to their
expiry dates.

In terms of responsibility for renewal:
(a) The registrant is responsible for renewing a domain name
(b) As a code of conduct requirement, a registrar should contact the
registrant at least 30 days before expiry, and no earlier than 90 days
before renewal

If step (b) fails it is usually because the contact details have not been
kept up-to-date.
The approach of undelegating the name on expiry helps spur registrants to
contact their reseller or registrar to resolve the problem.

I do not agree that it is the role of the registry to inform registrants
about expiry, just as it is not auDA role to do this.
We have a competitive registrar market, and it is the registrars'
responsibility for managing customer contact in consultation with resellers
- there is a large section in the code of conduct that deals with customer
contact.  Registrants will eventually choose registrars that have reliable
full life-cycle systems.  ie some new entrants may focus on new
registrations with no systems for maintenance or renewal of domain names.

Regards,
Bruce