Roland Turner wrote:
>
> Simon Hackett wrote:
> 
> > >>As I said before, my main problem with your proposal is the inconsistency
> > >>of having two commercial domains which do essentially the same thing.  If I
> > >>want to find Microsoft Australia, it seems logical to look at
> > >>www.microsoft.com.au.  To have to check www.microsoft.biz.au seems rather
> > >>redundant and would probably mean most companies would go for both.
> > 
> > No, you read their URL on their products, or on their TV adverts, or on
> 
> Not true. I frequently locate organisations by guessing a URL. VERY
> FREQUENTLY. This practice is so widespread that organisations choosing
> unconventional URLs for their homepage find themselves registering the
> conventional structure as well. (home.netscape.com springs to mind.)
> 

Herein lies the problem - at the moment, guessing oftentimes works, however I 
believe Simon is taking the longer term view that as a *very* restricted 
namespace as represented by any single DNS hierarchy becomes ever more 
populated with ever less meaningful entries, the usefulness of a guess tends 
towards zero. This is indeed what is happening already in .com especially.

> There appears to be an inconsistency in what you are arguing. On the one
> hand you are suggesting that what your domain is called is of no
> importance at all, whilst on the other, registry services require some
> demonstration of your entitlement to the name that you are registering.
> If indeed the name is of no importance, then why require any proof of
> anything. Why not allow me to register ibm.biz.au without any
> demonstration of my "right" to use that name.
> 

Exactly - the desire has always been to somehow "impose order" (I use the term 
advisedly) on DNS requests. I believe you are right in ascerting that this is 
self-defeating.

> I don't yet see the middleground. (One component of your URL is
> significant, but the rest is not?) So it seems that you can argue (a)
> that the name is important and therefore that the 2LD IS important or
> (b) that the name is not important, in which case you should allow
> anyone to register anything, or perhaps you should simply require the
> use of names like 123-456-789.acn.au.
> 

Simon and I have proposed exactly this in the past. It seems to me very 
beneficial to offer a completely different set of parameters for the 
allocation of DNS entries in this way, as it will provide if nothing else a 
different view of the problem.

> In human affairs, naming IS important: the name of an infant, a street,
> a nation, a project, a brand of peanut butter, whatever. I believe that
> making an attempt to keep the naming sensible is worthwhile. I
> acknowledge that a (tiny) proportion of commercial organisations in
> Australia have names in wierdo domains, but the vast majority have
> chosen to use com.au, even despite the long delays that held up requests
> when Mr. Elz was running the com.au registry on a volunteer basis.
> 

Well - lots of companies have used .net.au, as well as on.net, etc. - I would 
prefer to think of them as simply seeking viable alternatives. Again - any 
single DNS hierarchy based on words will lead directly to collisions, hence 
the problems as everyone has described.

> > funding the overheads required to support your database entry. Just be
> > careful about confusing database entries with rights to a name outside of
> > the Internet world.
> 
> It is a mistake to pretend that these things are indpendent. The very
> fact that registries require some attempt to demonstrate your right to
> use a name before allowing registration demonstrates this.
> 

I think you were correct above - the registries *shouldn't* attempt to do 
anything other than provide a listing service.

> Anyway, there is another point. If the names themsevles are not
> important, if it is not worthwhile to try to get to the point where
> competing entities can maintain the one address space, why then bother
> with joint/multiple administration of the biz.au namespace? Why not
> create biz.au and bozo.au and administer them seperately? If the move
> towards joint administration of a namespace is worth anything, why not
> do it with the widely accepted domain for registering commercial
> entities in Australia.
> 
> Simon, there's a lot in this post. To avoid the creation of a flame, I
> suggest that the one useful response that you can make to this posting
> is to explain why it is that you think that the third from the right
> component of a name is important whilst the rest are not, or if you do
> not think this, what you do think about the policy of most registries of
> requiring an applicant to demonstrate a right to use a name in the real
> world before registration.
> 

All Simon is advocating is something other than a single space - content 
independent.

Hugh