http://www.theaustralian.com.au/bus...s/news-story/19276086c7556d0a277131f04f31cca2
Government to review auDA operations
- Andrew Colley
- Australian IT
- 12:14PM June 7, 2011
Australia's quasi-government appointed domain name wholesaler AusRegistry has revealed it has supplied at least three theocratic regimes with the means to maintain "reserve lists" of forbidden domain names and to blacklist certain words from name registrations in the country code spaces.
AusRegistry chief executive Adrian Kinderis revealed to The Australian that the censorship apparatus was included in recent contracts to supply country code domain name systems to the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar.
A spokesman for the DBCDE said that the government needed more time to consider the issue as part of its current review of auDA when contacted by The Australian.
"The Minister has initiated a wide-ranging independent review of the activities and functions of auDA. It would be inappropriate at this stage to pre-empt any of its findings," the spokesman said.
While auDA is a federal government-endorsed non-profit body appointed to run and regulate the .au name space, it said it had no mechanisms within its reach to influence the conduct of registrars conducting business in other countries.
A spokesman for auDA said it would take measures to discourage registrars pursuing such contracts if ordered to do so by the government. However, he admitted it was an issue that auDA had never had to confront before.
auDA currently regulates the .au name space and periodically appoints the major commercial contract for wholesale domain name supply to retail registries.
AusRegistry has held the wholesale contract - which comes up for renewal in 2014 - since 2006.
"Those contracts are the primary mechanism of our relationship with them and if we were to take action outside the scope of them, we'd quite justifiably find ourselves in court," the auDA spokesman said.
Pursuing trade or industry policy to stop or discourage technology companies supporting the aims of oppressive governments was a matter for the Department of Broadband Communications and the Digital Economy (DBCDE) or Foreign Affairs and Trade, he said.
Words commonly found on reserve lists and blacklists maintained by included profanities and words of religious significance such as "jihad" and "Mohammed", Mr Kinderis said.
It's understood that words that might be used to promote homosexual agendas and promiscuity were also blacklisted or banned.
Mr Kinderis said the technology also made it possible to ban the registration of names that oppressive regimes might deem to be politically at odds with their anti-democratic and religiously-driven social policies.
"It depends what you call censorship. There's a lot more regulation as to what (domains) get registered so they build a robust reserve list and we built some technology in that allowed them for example to block a profanity or the mention of the word 'Mohammed' anywhere in domain name. So we won't allow a registration in that regard where as in Australia anyone can register just about anything. No words are prohibited because that's our culture," Mr Kinderis said.
It wasn't AusRegistry's place to make political judgements about its clients, he said.
"I guess I find it hard to empathise being from an Australian background but, as you say, business is business, and far be it for me to pass cultural judgements on them."