David raised a very interesting point about the linkage of authority 
and Domain names in the minds of the consumer.

Perhaps this is another case of the domain name system being seen as 
the general answer to a number of important functional requirements. 
A jack of all trades approach if you will.

The current domain name system does not secure a companies identity 
on the net. It helps but it does not secure it. However SSL 
certificates from legitimate CA's / RA's do:

http://www.VeriSign.com/ - http://www.eSign.com.au/
http://www.thawte.com/
http://www.baltimore.com/

SSL certificates are a perfectly good way of identifying an identity 
on the net. Customers know it and I for one don't put my financial 
details on any site without a good SSL connection. (If the site (not 
the domain as such) looks a little suspect I will also check the 
certificate.)

There are always ways around systems that are not designed to fulfill 
a certain function. i know a very good one around .com.au for 
instance.
 
(Ps Gatekeeper  and Identrus will certainly raise this issue in the 
coming months.)

**** Davids other point about the failure of ecommerce in Australia 
is pertinent.

E-commerce has really failed to take off in Australia  because we 
have had too many regulations and other dependencies.

My experience has found these four points to be the primary reasons 
for the woeful e-commerce status of this country.

1/ It is hard and expensive to get a domain name
2/ Telstra has sat on access rates and now broadband
3/ The federal government has played politics to the disadvantage of 
the IT sector
4/ Plus I would have to say the big banks have really sat on 
innovation and early adaptation of payment gateways.

5 Plus the business culture is also a little risk adverse.


>"Every body uses search engines"
>Search engines have no means of advising the user on the authority of a
>particular site to represent an organisation.
>DNS has that potential if we look after our DNS space. DNS is not a 
>directory service but it is as good as we have at the moment.


>Australia has the opportunity to avoid the mistakes of the US and maintain
>the usefulness (and commercial value) of DNS. Linking the DNS to an open
>directory regime will greatly add value to DNS and improve end users ability
>to find what they are after. This is probably one of the reason e-commerce
>fails to take off.