This is indeed an oversimplification, as you suspected.  It will be a very
tight exception to allow people who advertise their e-mail addresses (yellow
pages, website etc) to be approached by other businesses where the approach
relates specifically the addressees employment function.  Not a concession
to any lobby group - but we don't want to stifle legitimate e-business.

Hope this clarifies.

Lindsay Barton


-----Original Message-----
From: Kim Davies [mailto:kim§cynosure.com.au]
Sent: Friday, 25 July 2003 3:11
To: dns§lists.auda.org.au
Subject: [DNS] DNS and Spam


Sorry to take things off on a tangent a little..

I haven't been following recent spam developments in Australia lately,
but the flurry of articles in the media has been hard to miss...

One article that caught my eye was at
http://www.computerworld.com.au/index.php?id=589997653&fp=16&fpid=0
which reads in part:

    Notably, the legislation also contains major concessions to
    the direct marketing industry, who will be allowed to continue
    to harvest Australian e-mail addresses on .com.au sites on the
    Internet, essentially for the purpose of business to business
    marketing.

Is this true? Surely this represents a fundamental loophole and
misunderstanding of the role of second level domains.

Having an email address end in .com.au does not at all signify that the
users of that domain are commercial enterprises. On the contrary, many
(most?) ISPs in Australia hand out email addresses under this 2LD to all
their customers.

Secondly, such practice seemingly legitimises spamming .com.au domain
holders for the purposes of domain name renewal.

I sincerely hope this is either an oversimplification or the author got
it wrong. I'd hate to see .com.au die off because it became some
legitimated spammer refuge.

kim

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