Don,

I did not suggest that we lacked "sufficient funding for managed advertising
(of calls for public comment etc.)"  I made no mention of public comment and
it is not correct to suggest that auDA cannot fund such processes.

I said that auDA does not, at present, have the funds to instigate a public
awareness campaign which by necessity would be scatter-gun in its approach.
There is a difference. Soon we will be commencing our 'education campaign'
to inform people about the new changes etc. When we do that we will also be
able to deal with existing practices.

As for approaching NOIE, whilst I cannot speak for them, my understanding is
that they support a self-regulatory system that is self funded. A
self-regulatory system, by definition does not have a legislative basis from
which to operate but regulates itself.

Volunteers were offered the opportunity to be a registry operator. The
tender was open to everyone.

I do not think your linking of volunteer registry operators and voluntary
actions of ISPs is valid. ISPs/re-sellers are in business. One of the
fundamental tenets of good business (at least from my point of view) is that
an opportunity to contact your customers (to place you at the 'top of their
mind') is very valuable. I would have thought that most re-sellers and ISPs
would have welcomed the opportunity to have a good reason to contact their
customers and keep them informed. Further, and perhaps far more importantly,
it is those very re-sellers and ISPs who are losing customers to the
'sharks'. Surely the tiny cost of emailing their database with relevant
educational information is worthwhile. Apart from anything else, it's simply
good customer service. This does not mean that they sould stop complaining
to us, ACCC and so on. It just means that a little pro-activity wouldn't go
astray.

It is not auDA's role to market the .au domain name space to any great
degree. auDA is the policy body. It will be the role of the Registry
Operators which is why the RFT asks the specific questions;

"Give details of the Respondent's proposed Marketing Plan pursuant to the
Registry Licence Agreement." and,
"Give details of the Respondent's capacity to contribute to the development
of the domain name industry in Australia."

Regards,


Chris Disspain
CEO - auDA
ceo§auda.org.au
+61-3-9349-4711
www.auda.org.au


-----Original Message-----
From: Don Cameron [mailto:donc§mudgeeab.com.au]
Sent: Wednesday, 21 November 2001 11:59
To: dns§auda.org.au
Subject: Re: [DNS] auDA web site

Hi all,

Firstly, thank you Chris for your responses. A degree of frustration has
been communicated in recent postings, and the courtesy and grace with which
you reply is welcomed and appreciated.

Like Ron I am not 'against' auDA in these matters, however there are obvious
challenges to be faced, and the continuance of repetitious themes outlining
the reasons why things cannot be done, sadly only gives rise to further
frustration - it's a vicious circle (the dreaded loop in a bad piece of
code), however one that will not be broken without open appraisal and
analysis of all the available options.

I have recently posted on the possibility of NOIE taking a more proactive
role in some of these issues, and noting your own comments to the effect
that you lack sufficient funding for managed advertising (of calls for
public comment etc.), and that you also lack the legislative basis to
enforce community protection policies, would it be a 'bad thing' to approach
NOIE for legislative assistance and input?

Another of the loops we seem to be stuck in involves the matter of volunteer
administration of .org and .asn etc. On one hand we are presented with the
argument that volunteers should not be offered these entities, because the
formalities of commercial tendering is paramount to competition, yet on the
other hand we are told that it is only through the voluntary 'good grace' of
ISP's that any of these other issues will be addressed. Can we really have
it both ways? - ISP's are quite entitled to charge for distributing auDA
correspondence, and understandably may well wish to do so considering their
own costs are likely to increase through implementation of the competitive
model (even though these cost will undoubtedly be passed-on to customers for
items such as .org.au domains etc.).

In closing, I forwarded a posting a few days ago requesting information on
auDA's long-term marketing strategies and the vision for the .au namespace.
Accepting the Competition Advisory Panel's findings were undoubtedly subject
to a brief during which this was discussed, is such a document available? -
If possible I would like to get an overview of where we are heading, so some
of these administrative matters can be assessed in the context of exactly
what it is we are trying to achieve.

Regards, Don

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