on 22/11/00 1:18 AM, David Keegel at djk§cyber.com.au wrote:

> ] * a new domain space (perhaps firm.au?) which embodies the goal of .com.au.
> ] All Australian businesses are allocated space within this domain strictly in
> ] accordance with their business name.
> 
> This kind of thing has already been tried - for example plc.uk and ltd.uk.
> Hardly anybody uses them, companies prefer co.uk instead.


I couldn't find much information about those domains. But a key requirement
in my proposal would be the free automatic nature of domain creation. I
don't know if that has been tried elsewhere.


> 
> ] * The government would meet the cost of running the registrar.
> 
> I expect this idea would soon grind to a halt when it collides with the
> concept of "user pays" (which you may have noticed is quite popular among
> Governments for the last decade or so).  For example in Victoria, Business
> Name registration costs about $70.  You seem to be proposing Government do
> a fair bit more than just registering business names.


Yes. I am. I still believe that government is there to create
infrastructure. Radical perhaps.


> Would this domain pointing happen at the time of registration or later?

Either. Depending on whether the information was available.


> 
> If its at the time of registration, the person applying for the name
> is probably not going to know that kind of information (there are
> probably higher priorities like getting a PO Box or office and a
> telephone, for most business just being set up).
> 
> If it is later, you need to sort out some authentication scheme so
> you can tell whether the person putting in DNS servers is somehow
> related to the person who registered the business name.  Okay, so
> you issue them a password at registration time.  Now what do you
> do with the people who lose it (or change it and forget it)?  Even
> if its only 5% of businesses, that is a lot of passwords to handle.


These are issues, but solvable. A fee would be payable where some ID
verification is required to recover a password. Fees cover costs.

In most cases a setup just like the current aunic NIC handle key recovery
should work well. No fee needs to be charged for this automated service.


> If half the businesses aren't online at all, and half of the remainder
> think com.au sounds better and don't bother with firm.au, you are going
> to get a pretty low strike rate.  That means people won't try it as a
> guess very much.  Which means there is not much incentive for business
> owners to bother setting it up if they can get a com.au instead.
> This is starting to look like a vicious cycle.


Of course. Which is why setting up a default web page for every business
would be a start. Perhaps this default page has links to
www.whitepages.com.au and www.whereis.com.au for phone listings and maps. It
could be easily made into a simple but useful resource to encourage people
to use the domain space. That breaks the vicious cycle.


> 
> ] * More costly again, this concept could be extended to a .name.au domain
> ] space for individuals. I haven't even begun to think about the problems this
> ] would entail. ari.maniatis.darghan.glebe.nsw.name.au ?????
> 
> You mean like id.au?  Except id.au isn't broken up by geography (people
> tend to move interstate), instead it uses third level identifiers which are
> basically interchangeable.  It's a fairly primitive form of competition,
> but not so bad when you consider the alternatives in 1995.

Yes, like .id.au. But that didn't work IMHO because:

- people don't like being fred.wombat.id.au or whatever the second levels
were.

- people are only recently seeing the benefit of domain names for
individuals as they churn between ISPs and change their email addresses. But
then they often lack the technical knowledge to deal with a domain and
instead turn to email services like hotmail for a stable email address.

But let's focus on the simpler business space firm.au.

> Sorry about shooting down your proposal.  Nothing personal.

Not at all. I appreciate the reasoned response, but I still don't see any
fundamental problems with the idea except that it will cost the government
money and it requires positive action rather than a 'let's wait and see what
private enterprise comes up with' attitude.


> 
> __________________________________________________________________________
> David Keegel <djk&#167;cyber.com.au>  URL: http://www.cyber.com.au/users/djk/
> Cybersource P/L: Unix Systems Administration and TCP/IP network management
> 


Ari Maniatis



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