In message <199806230949.TAA26231&#167;nico.telstra.net>, Geoff Huston writes:
>of the administrative preconditions imposed on DAs there will be incidents
>of scam-based trading practices without doubt. The over compensation risk
>lies in the proliferation of SLDs, and the consequent devaluation the

regardless of whether the outcome is more SLDs / competition within existing
SLDs, I think it would be important if we can decide on some general rules
for operations within a SLD.

to my mind, one of the biggest reasons for scam-based-growth within .com/
.net is due to the fact that you can get a domain name registered and
delegated PRIOR to having to depart with $$$ for the service (hoarding).
this effecively leads to hoarding.  (and then domains that expire, and then
are hoarded again, and then expire, ... ad nauseum).

for whatever transpires here, I think we should have a general policy to
attempt to prevent this.

what this effectively amounts to is that domain name authorities themselves
aren't permitted to act, on their own initiative, registering/delegating
registering/delegating names that they think *might* be useful sometime
in the future.

this hasn't yet happened in any domains within the AU tree -- nor do i
know of it happening elsewhere either -- but we can be sure that someone
will try and do it one day.

whilst some people have differing views on the current com.au policies on
what is/isn't allowed, it, as a policy, along with an ethical-allocation
policy by kre initially, then MelbIT/DNA, has effectively resulted in this.
i think this is a _good_thing_.  and it should remain so.

maybe this is already implied in the existing policies, but i don't think
it is a bad thing to spell it out either.

(i guess its possible to come up with a counter-argument that a domain-name-
authority would get themselves a bad name by 'hoarding' brand-name-domains
before they're used -- however, i'm sure any large corporation couldn't
afford to stand by, on principal, and watch their domain go to some other
company, on the off-chance that someone mis-types their domain).


cheers,

lincoln.
(.. looking forward to some informed discussion ..)