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auDA to Cripple Business

ttfan

Top Contributor
I wonder if this might create a short term spike in .net.au and others, just to improve chances of getting the .au?
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
anyone doing that has been wasting their money.. They do not have any chance of getting the .au as per the PRP suggestions and talks.

SAVE YOUR MONEY. Don't think of wasting your time trying to get the .id.au or .net.au now you will be ripped off.
 

snoopy

Top Contributor
I wonder if this might create a short term spike in .net.au and others, just to improve chances of getting the .au?

The cutoff date is 2016. At present anything registered or bought after the cutoff date would have no rights. Example FetchTV, purchaser of fetch.com.au would have no right to fetch.au and it would go to the owner of fetch.net.au automatically (assuming no other variants were taken at the cutoff date which looks to be the case).

In short it is a wealth transfer from .com.au owners to .net.au, .id.au, asn.au owners etc. The .com.au owners will need to buy them out under the proposal or risk a competitor starting with a name that is confusingly close.
 
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DomainNames

Top Contributor
Hang on I have an id.au why can't I get realestate.au, seek.au, news.au, RSVP.au, CarSales.au now..... ..That's why I voted YES.....I thought this was my ticket to get rich and that I would get the .au of anything I wanted..?? .... ( this is a joke... but not too far off facts some people thought and hope for why they voted YES)

Sorry you were sold a dummy.. they just wanted your yes vote.... no names for you!
 

Jimboot

Top Contributor
Narelle was just of the panel members who ridiculed me. I was told my video was
Misleading and incorrect. I explained I was there to learn so please correct me. They would not. I was shouted down by the accc for trying to explain how this will hurt business. I was told I was as stupid as I looked by a registrar to the whole room. I’m angry now. My vid is over 11k views on fb & Li. I have invited the senator on to my show. Business owners are sharing with their network throughout the country. This campaign is just starting. I have also put budget aside for an ad campaign. They poked the bear
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
Narelle was just of the panel members who ridiculed me. I was told my video was
Misleading and incorrect. I explained I was there to learn so please correct me. They would not. I was shouted down by the accc for trying to explain how this will hurt business. I was told I was as stupid as I looked by a registrar to the whole room. I’m angry now. My vid is over 11k views on fb & Li. I have invited the senator on to my show. Business owners are sharing with their network throughout the country. This campaign is just starting. I have also put budget aside for an ad campaign. They poked the bear

The way you where talked over and treated at the PRP meeting was disgraceful.

It was obvious they do not want to hear from an expert in SEO who has the knowledge and facts to go against the very one sided unsupported claims which had been made and said to even get it to this stage.

Brett Fenton was pushing at the PRP Melbourne meeting it cannot be stopped.. All we need to do is present all his efforts and his related companies efforts to push it in over the years.. much of it online and much of it has been compiled and ready to present when and if it is needed. The Conflicts of Interests are overwhelming.

Jim, If I was you I would also contact auDA and the Minister to request they put all of the PRP Audio and Recordings on the auDA website. FOI it if needed.

NO other global extension has gone through such a chaotic mess as this.

The audio will validate the auDA PRP Melbourne meeting was a perfect example how public consultation should not be run.

There is no way to take this process seriously or have any confidence in it after I witnessed it myself in both Sydney and then Melbourne.

Less than 100 people in total for all of Australia attended the Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane meetings... including auDA staff.

What was the cost of this roadshow?

What did it achieve if they refused to listen to experts such as Jim Stewart because he questioned them for facts to support their statements, suggestions and claims?

It showed me this is another page in the poor management of the .au namespace by auDA and the increasing damage it has done to the .au namespace globally.

No use auDA posting invites to their very small linkedin or facebook numbers... Why do they still refuse to let existing .au domain name owners know about this stuff via an email to them?

Strangely we hear auDA are planning to spend a lot of money promoting the .au later and will contact the registrants then.... seriously this is a major mistake. Will they advertise and promote the .au is better than what we have now and how does this create .au domain name market stability and confidence in the existing .au namespace without damaging it? It can't. Look at what happened in .uk and .nz it meant people left the namespace..There was no doubling of UK and NZ registration numbers as some in supply promoted it would do and we say this same B.S. presented and sold here by a party who obviously wanted to make more money from the monopoly:
https://www.ausregistry.com.au/product-innovation-will-produce-the-next-3-million-au-domains/

Ausregistry staff members claim; "The introduction of shorter, new Top-Level Domains and the policy reforms of other country codes may mean the second-level structure of .au no longer demonstrates good market fit."

Does this sort of material and claim hurt the existing .au namespace and current 3 million .au registrants? YES it does.

Fact: NZ fact the .nz has failed and is not "remarkably successful" as claimed "Figure 3 shows the total number of domain names increased from 640,342 (at 1 April 2015) to 656,607 (at 31 March 2016) – a growth of 16,265, or 2.5 percent. The dip between February and March 2016 reflects the one-year anniversary of the end of the preferential registration and registration period - an important part of the registrations direct at the second level change. It appears that some registrants, having exercised their preferential registration rights, have subsequently let the shorter version of their name drop. "

For years auDA said we are not .uk and and we are not .nz thats why we have different policy and better policy etc.. Now they want to do a mix match of them both and create some Frankenstein plan of implementation then go and promote that as being the best extension? CRAZY!

It has been a very expensive and damaging chaos created under current auDA management. It is not working.
 
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DomainNames

Top Contributor
It would appear Brett Fenton from Mebourne IT, the previous Panel and now the auDA PRP says this:

".......more choice in the marketplace could potentially make their existing .com.au domains less valuable."

That means it could potentually make EVERY existing .com.au owners investment less valuable!

2 million plus .com.au owners!

Is this sort of thinking how Melbourne IT thinks? Should shareholders and .com.au owners, DoCA, Ministers, Media and Melbourne IT customers be made aware of this stuff?

https://www.tppwholesale.com.au/blog/vote-yes-opening-au-direct-registrations/

Is this his goal because in his role he is not allowed to own any under the Registrar rules?

Damaging the existing .au namespace is against the Government's own endorsement of auDA and Supply obligations.

I think they pay him enough over the years to compensate

There is no way Brett Fenton should never have been put on the auDA PRP or be promoting his plan to push this in with this sort of activity blatantly pushing for direct registrations, making unfounded claims and his opinion of his customers who have built Melbourne IT over the years is just plain odd!

Brett feel free to correct me here but we are cutting and pasting from your own communications!

Slagging off your customers to get a yes vote and sway people into agreeing we need more extensions? Seriously? I think 1500+ extensions are enough now for people to choose from?

https://www.domainer.com.au/rocking-the-boat/

"Recently I’ve noticed a few members of the Names Panel have been publicly voicing their preferences for .au – in particular there was this blog article on TPPWholesale by Brett Fenton (Brett is currently the Chief Customer Officer of Melbourne IT Group). The obligatory disclaimer states that this is his personal view and not necessarily reflective of the company’s views.

I like Brett – and have always found him to be a straight shooter. However, he does represent entities that have “skin in the game”.

What fired me up was this quote from his blog article:

"The other area of resistance to the proposed change is from the ‘domainer’ community. Domainers buy domains purely to sell later at a profit, and monetise their domain portfolio through the traffic that arrives at the domain. You could say domainers have a vested interest in the discussion around opening up second level registrations as more choice in the marketplace could potentially make their existing .com.au domains less valuable."

The reason I am upset by this is that I am a TPP Wholesale customer with many hundreds of domains under their management.

I submitted a comment in response on the blog, but to date it hasn’t been published or responded to.

This is what I said:

@Brett – I note your comments re the “domainer community” and their supposed “resistance to the proposed change”.

My understanding is that many domainers and domain investors would ultimately support such a change – provided that existing registrants rights are protected (like what happened in the .uk and .nz space).

Are you suggesting that there should be no rights offered to existing registrants?

If this is what you’re suggesting, I’m interested to know how you see the allocation of the new .au domains working fairly and effectively?

Hopefully Brett will respond on here – and I respectfully invite him to do so.

In tomorrow’s article
  • Needless to say, I mostly disagree with Brett, and will be explaining why in detail.
  • I’m not averse to the introduction of .au if the majority of people really think it is necessary (I don’t).
  • However, should this be sanctioned, I believe it should be conditional upon existing registrants being entitled to “first rights” just like what happened in the UK and NZ.
  • These will be my personal views, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Names Panel (or individual members thereof)."
 
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snoopy

Top Contributor
Narelle was just of the panel members who ridiculed me. I was told my video was
Misleading and incorrect. I explained I was there to learn so please correct me. They would not. I was shouted down by the accc for trying to explain how this will hurt business. I was told I was as stupid as I looked by a registrar to the whole room. I’m angry now. My vid is over 11k views on fb & Li. I have invited the senator on to my show. Business owners are sharing with their network throughout the country. This campaign is just starting. I have also put budget aside for an ad campaign. They poked the bear

This is how auDA works. They will "nit pick" based on technicalities and argue what they have done is "legally valid". Keep doing what you are doing Jim, the average person doesn't know about this and auDA hopes to keep it that way.
 

snoopy

Top Contributor
Any evidence of .com.au devaluation yet?

Pretty sure the drop catchers have made some public comments very recently about this at some of those Auda meetings? One actually closed several months ago because of it.

"The secondary market has been significantly destabilised by the announcement and then subsequent delays in the implementation of direct registrations by auDA."

https://www.dntrade.com.au/threads/blackout-week-protest.11580/
 

Jimboot

Top Contributor
I have requested the audio but Donna the person who answered the phone said she wasn't sure if it was going to be released.
 

snoopy

Top Contributor
I have requested the audio but Donna the person who answered the phone said she wasn't sure if it was going to be released.

That is funny Jim, it is almost as bad as them telling you to stop taking photos of the presentation slides at the Melbourne meeting. What happened to transparency?

They don't genuinely want the general public to know.

Release the tapes auDA!
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
"The secondary market has been significantly destabilised by the announcement and then subsequent delays in the implementation of direct registrations by auDA."

https://www.dntrade.com.au/threads/blackout-week-protest.11580/[/QUOTE]

People made the mistake to think the solution to push this through and it would stablise the market. That would be chaos and it is already having this affect.

auDA Management and Supply needs to admit the old auDA Board is gone.

The new Board has very experienced Directors who have the honesty and guts to say the process to date has been rigged.. it is a cash grab...and that it should not proceed.

The pressure is still from people at auDA and in "Supply" who want the $$$, perhaps their own personal bonuses at the expense of any of the existing 3 million .au names in use in a very highly regarded global namespace.

Brett Fenton ( Melbourne IT) should never have been on the auDA PRP.
https://www.domainer.com.au/rocking-the-boat/
 

DomainNames

Top Contributor
I have requested the audio but Donna the person who answered the phone said she wasn't sure if it was going to be released.

Jim maybe you can post someone needs to tell ASIC and the DoCA that auDA is breaching their obligations and Constitution again if they refuse to make the Public meeting auDA PRP Audio and Presentation information available to "all parties having an interest in use of the domain name system in Australia"

https://www.auda.org.au/about-auda/our-org/constitution/
3.2 Activities
Without reducing the effect of clause 4, auDA will see to achieve its principal purposes as set out in clause 3.1 through:
a. ensuring the continued operational stability of the domain name system in Australia;
b. establishing mechanisms to ensure it is responsive and accountable to the supply and demand sides of the Australian Internet Community;
c. the promotion of competition in the provision of domain name services;
d. the promotion of fair trading;
e. the promotion of consumer protection;
f. adopting open and transparent procedures which are inclusive of all parties having an interest in use of the domain name system in Australia;

g. ensuring its operations produce timely outputs which are relevant to the needs of the Australian Internet Community.
(Amended by Special Resolution, 14 August 2006)
https://web.archive.org/web/20000817053751/http://www.auda.org.au:80/correspondence-noie1.html
"Letter from NOIE to auDA

The National Office for the Information Economy
Department of Communication, Information Technology and the Arts

Mr Michael Malone
Chair, auDA,
c/- iiNet
Level 9, 250 St Georges Tce
Perth WA 6000
June 1999


Dear Mr Malone,

Congratulations on your election to the auDA interim Board and
appointment as Chairman.

As you are aware, the National Office for the Information Economy
(NOIE) has been acting as the lead agency within Government on
the issue of developing a new system for the administration of
the .au domain. I am writing to you in that capacity, following
discussions with a range of other interested agencies within the
Federal government (?the agencies?).

The Government?s overall objective in relation to the management
of the .au domain is to ensure that there are appropriate, stable
and sustainable arrangements for the management of the .au
domain, which the Government sees as an increasingly important
element of Australia?s communications infrastructure. The
Government has a strong preference for industry self-regulation,
as long as we can have confidence that this will meet the overall
objective.

These considerations underpinned the key criteria which NOIE
initially indicated to the .au Working Group would need to be
satisfied in order for Government to have confidence that an
industry self regulatory process would be capable of being made
to work. Those criteria were that any scheme would need to be:

· open
· transparent
· scaleable
· stable
· responsive and accountable to the internet community (including
the various elements of both the supply and demand sides), and
· self-funding.

The agencies consider that the formation of auDA has the
potential to meet these requirements, although further work needs
to be done. The election of the interim board has been an
important first step, and we look forward to working with the
board in order to bring about a situation whereby government can
be confident that all of the objectives will be met in practice.
The remainder of this letter sets out the key areas where the
agencies consider that further work needs to be done.

First, as you are aware, the .au Working Group consciously
decided not to make any decisions about the structural funding
arrangements for auDA, on the basis that this was appropriately a
matter for the incoming board. This is a critical issue both for
the longer-term sustainability of the company and the process,
and for the acceptance by stakeholders across the whole Internet
community that the process is transparent and fair.

Second, there remains an issue about the accountability
criterion. NOIE has received representations from a number of
important stakeholders within the internet community expressing
concern about the degree to which the current board is in fact
able, or willing, to take account of the views and legitimate
interests of those stakeholders. It is important that the board
move quickly to address these concerns, and establish operational
guidelines and/or other mechanisms that will give all parties
confidence that the process can be made to work in practice.


Further, on this issue, the agencies consider that the interim
board should move quickly to work out arrangements which will be
workable in the longer term for those second level domains for
which there is a well defined, non-commercial community of
interest inherent in the domain. The main domains which we see
as falling into this category are .gov.au, .edu.au, and
.csiro.au. We believe that working through these arrangements
will be of assistance both in itself, and in promoting confidence
within the wider Internet community.

Third, the board needs to make significant progress in providing
guidance as to how it sees auDA addressing the issues concerned
with the ensuring
the operational stability of the DNS in
Australia and promoting the utility, value and good reputation of
the .au domain space.


Given that there may be several different ways of satisfying
Government requirements listed above, I believe it would be
useful to discuss these matters, and to identify options with a
view to establishing an agreed process for moving these matters
forward.

Our sense is that the internet community agrees that the
development of an appropriate new system for the administration
of the .au domain space is now well over due. I therefore seek
your cooperation in progressing this matter in a timely manner.
I look forward to establishing a productive working relationship
with you in this matter.

NOIE?s contact officer in this matter is Dr Erica Roberts. She
can be contacted on 02 62711607 or by e-mail at
erica.roberts@noie.gov.au

As a separate matter, staff of the Australian Competition and
Consumer Commission have indicated that auDA, as a collective
organisation with potential competitors as members, may
constitute an arrangement that substantially lessens competition
in a market and therefore raises concerns under the Trade
Practices Act 1974. Consequently, it may be wise for the interim
auDA board to seek authorisation of auDA?s constitution under the
Act. Commission staff have suggested that it would be
appropriate for the auDA interim board to consider the Trade
Practices Act compliance of auDA and then contact the Commission
to discuss this matter.
The contact officer from the Commission
is Mr Ken Walliss, who can be contacted on (02) 6243 1114, or
krw@accc.gov.au. I would urge you to take up this offer.

Yours sincerely

Chris Cheah
General Manager
Regulatory Framework and Bandwidth"

 

snoopy

Top Contributor
People made the mistake to think the solution to push this through and it would stablise the market. That would be chaos and it is already having this affect.

Agree, the whole thing is going drag on for years. Obviously nobody knows what is really happening and proposals are pretty bizarre. There is no chance of the whole thing ending well, it is just a mess to try and split something up when dealing with established brands.

It wasn't broken.
 

snoopy

Top Contributor
Is there a way to submit a complaint to the board?

You can write a letter but history suggests it will be completely ignored!

Best method is go to the AGM and read out your complaint to them, bit of a wait though. You could also tell Tim or Ned.
 

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