crown.com.au - Did the Melbourne IT CEO breach policies

[trellian]

A recent article on Domainer.com.au highlighted some potential policy breaches made by the Melbourne IT CEO. The actions to restore a domain with a cancelled ACN seem to be in clear breach of both auDA and Melbourne IT policies.

auDA has started an official investigation into the actions of Melbourne IT and their CEO to see if a policy breach notice needs to be issued.

More importantly auDA should have set the domain back to Policy Delete status at the very least as this creates a dangerous precedent where any registrar can just breach auDA policies instead of spending the time and going through theit client lists and pro actively fix cancelled ABN/ACN based registrations. Registrars like Drop, Above, Synergy have have been proactively fixing cancelled ACN domain registrations, but the rest are just ignoring the issue.

Maybe the rules do not apply to the big guys in the space, instead sending a few legal letters trying threats and intimidation to kill this story. Hard to claim defamation when the truth is posted.

A Linkedin post has received a lot of traction and even auDA commented on directly, which is nice to see that they are taking this seriously, but unfortunately they have still not placed the domain into policy delete. I hope that their investigation is quickly completed as having this undecided is creating a lot of confusion in the space and is also encouraging Registrars to fight amongst each other which is bad for the industry overall.

Melbourne IT should just delete the domain and let it drop and everyone would be able to move on. The original registrant has had since Dec 2022 to make corrections and getting a free extension against current policies is setting the wrong precendent.

 

[DomainShield]

I do not understand why auDA and MelbIT can put so much time and effort into a single domain while simultaneously ignoring the fact that more than 10% of all the domains registered at Melbourne IT/Webcentral are with a cancelled ABN. Active ABN checking is such a basic part of a registrars obligation that it should be trivial to automate and solve.

auDA is aiming for a 95% whois accuracy, Webcentral group is double this target and that is even not counting a further 20% of domains with bad data to some extent.

Would it not make sense for auDA to put some restrictions on the offending Registrars to encourage them to fix these issues? Maybe stop giving them marketing funds, impose new domain registrations locks till their % come down to a reasonable number?

 

[Horshack]

Any updates to this saga?

 

[trellian]

Only update is that auDA has decided to give the Registrant as much time as they want to resurrect their former entity. Well that is what it seems to us.

Rather disappointing and concerning.

I understand that auDA has a compliance posture to help Registrants but it also has a far more important responsibility to maintain public trust and to enforce applicable rules in fairness to all, especially where a party has not complied with auDA's rules, acted without good faith or unreasonably, auDA and the registrars have power to suspend or cancel a domain name license. (Taken from auDA compliance posture section).

Unfortunately auDA has chosen not to follow their own policies or their own compliance posture guidelines in this case.
Why? We can only speculate that this must be due to Melbourne IT putting a lot of pressure on auDA to save face. We can not think of any other reason why auDA would not place the domain into Policy Delete and give the registrant 14 days to fix their entity details like all other cancelled ABN/ACN clients get.

 

[helloworld]

Well on the plus side this could be beneficial for domainers moving forward?

Saving this thread for future reference thoguh

 

[trellian]

Over 30 days and no action from auDA and Rosemary Sinclair is still not committing to make a decision.

Makes one think that auDA is no longer fit for purpose when they can not make a decision.

 

[Erwin]

This is a very fascinating story! As some of you would know that are following this story, the registrant was able to keep the domain.. I very much look forward to auDA’s explanation as to why!..

 

[Horshack]

It's interesting that they seem to have allowed the registration to change from a deregistered company to a sole trader for the same person. It was a deregistered company wasn't it????

 

[Erwin]

It's interesting that they seem to have allowed the registration to change from a deregistered company to a sole trader for the same person. It was a deregistered company wasn't it????

Can someone please clarify if auDA considers a ‘continual registered entity’ (eg: moving from a sole trader to a registered company, or vice versa) grounds for re-registration of a .au domain?

 

[trellian]

auDA have decided not to follow their own policies in this case. Seems like auDA polices are optional and only applied in cases where auDA do not like you or have something against you, such as being seen to support domain investors which seems to be the only issue here.

 

[trellian]

A quick update. auDA have informed that the investigation into this domain and the way it was recovered is still being investigated... No time frame provided as to how much longer they plan to investigate...

 

[Erwin]

A quick update. auDA have informed that the investigation into this domain and the way it was recovered is still being investigated... No time frame provided as to how much longer they plan to investigate...

This investigation update, is this public info?

 

[trellian]

auDA and being public, yeah nah