on 18/10/00 8:07 PM, m§rk.net at m§rk.net wrote:

> What interests me more is why we even bother with second-level domains like
> .com.au or whatever - I'd much rather have domainname.au and do away with
> the whole .net.au, .asn.au crap.



There are many countries who have gone down this path, but there are some
significant problems:

1- no distinction for government (.gov) and educational bodies (.edu). It
makes sense to give them domain suffixes of their own. They are then not
competing in the same namespace.

2- Even lower supply to meet the demand. At the moment, just having both
net.au and com.au almost doubles the amount of space available to
businesses. net.au is being used more and more by non-networking businesses.

I would actually advocate in the opposite direction. The current high US
prices for generic word domains, and the strong pressure here is because
demand is greater than supply. Another person pointed that out recently on
this list.

There is only one book.com.au, and we all have a grumble over the
inconsistent policies of MelbourneIT in allocating good names (allegedly) to
those with power, influence or money.

Extending the domain space with firm.au, biz.au, shop.au, etc., etc. might
go some way to alleviate the supply restrictions. Of course, it doesn't help
if companies feel it is their duty to fill all the available name space.

Patrick Corliss wrote:

> I don't know when the shareholders met but I find it most surprising that a
> billion dollar corporation like BHP:
> 
> (a)    nearly lost onesteel.com.au
> (b)   did lose onesteel.net and onesteel.org
> (c)    hasn't cleaned up onesteel.net.au.


Personally I find this disconcerting. Why should the organisation be allowed
to register more than one name? 'Cleaning up' should be considered a bad
thing, not a positive outcome.

Trade marks are registered within a particular section (ie. for the type of
goods and services). They are not available across the board in every
section and the cost of doing so would be high. Furthermore those trade
marks must be actively protected (ie. used) in each section they are
registered or else the mark stands a chance of being struck. There should be
similar tests for domain names. They should be actively used separately for
their individual purposes.

The rule against ownership of more than one domain is clearly not enforced.
It is trivial to work around (as others have pointed out) and only involves
a small additional business registration fee. Surely there are some
additional tests that could be put in place:

1- who owns the business name? Do they ultimately all belong to one
business?
2- do the multiple domain names all point to the same machines for web
hosting, MX, ftp, etc?
3- do the multiple domains point to the same (or identical) pages?

At this point though, the technical policing is less important than the
policies which are being made (albeit rather too slowly). Hopefully we will
see some reform in the not too distance future from the AuDA committees.


Ari Maniatis

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