A quick question for those qualified to give an opinion;

Could the 'conditions' placed on the application for .com.au domain 
names in the forthcoming auction, specifically those dealing with the 
cutoff date of August, be seen as constituting a "restriction of trade" 
or an "unfair advantage" ?

It just seems to me like they would be giving an advantage to those who 
have a business name registered prior to August, and therefore possibly 
reduce the amount of money raised by AUDA in the auction, and quite 
possibly benefit those who were privy to knowing that an auction process 
was being planned.
Like all of us on this list..all 327 of us..
I'm not being sinister, I'm talking about all the mums and dads who 
might well have been willing to take a punt and register a business name 
if they had known anything about the dns, comau or internet in general, 
prior to this forthcoming auction.

I don't have a crystal ball, but something tells me that names like 
shopping.com.au may well be worth buying.
Traffic costs money, it's as simple as that.
A good generic domain can get you rank in search engines based purely on 
url.
Generic domains are easily remembered.
They are desirable, and people have good reason to pay high prices, it 
has been demonstrated before and will be again.

Surely an open transparent process, more representative of all 
stake-holders is in order.
As a member of AUDA, I want the process to be one that returns the 
highest monetary gain to AUDA.
Very simple and fair to all.


Regards.

Mike Russell.