Hostess rejecting generic names based on 'close & substantial' connection policy.

[snoopy]

I didn't mean to convey that id.au is any good, just that it is there for for non-professionals and hobby sites.

Students generally have allocated subdomains/sub folders on .edu's - that seems sufficent to me, or even publishing their paper on a .id.au is a good fit for that purpose.

Chess club can have .asn.au - I don't see anything wrong with that, it's instantly recognisable as an association or club.

These are all pretty bad. Who wants a whole lot of weird or hard to remember options?

Whilst some of these options might be "technically correct" actually using them is another thing entirely.

Even .org.au is too far from what is expected for some, eg world vision probably wisely using a .com.au.

 

[djuqa]

I could name several members here that state they want to make money but resent the need for ABN's.

the "COM" in .com.au does imply Commercial or Business activity.

Maybe .Net.au should be freely available for all.
or the rejected re-release of info.au should be revisited by auDA.

I agree the restrictions on id.au limit their usage but would any of them be left in 6 months if de-restricted.

The mega portfolio companies would just bulk register all good Names within days/weeks

I see no problem in Aussie based Hobby,Special interest or Niche sites using NON .au names

After all the Internet is internationally accessible!


Yes I am wearing my Mr GRUMPY shirt today. I get sick to death of Whingers complaining about having to have an ABN/ACN/TM to qualify for AU names.

If that is what is needed then just get one for now. Join auDA to try to change policy for the future. Go with the flow!
We get a pretty good deal with .au names . How would we be if like some countries and get CHARGED $xxx per name

 

[DavidL]

I didn't mean to convey that id.au is any good, just that it is there for for non-professionals and hobby sites.

Students generally have allocated subdomains/sub folders on .edu's - that seems sufficent to me, or even publishing their paper on a .id.au is a good fit for that purpose.

Chess club can have .asn.au - I don't see anything wrong with that, it's instantly recognisable as an association or club.

No, I know you weren't. It's just that id.au have to be names or nicknames which isn't ideal.

Student, being increasingly web savvy might feel restricted by having to publish their info on a convoluted subdomain like 576pf.arts.monash.vic.edu.au (if that's the sort of thing you mean - I'm not sure)

Trouble is with the chess club issue is people can take advantage of it. They can state they run a mesothelioma support group every Thursday and therefore are eligible for mesothelioma.asn.au. This is too hard for auDA to prove otherwise.

So one suggestion (which I agree with) is to tighten up org.au and insist on some sort of identifier to prevent abuse of these sensitive extensions.

This though stuffs up the chess club because they haven't gone to the extent of formally registering their organisation (and now should they have to).

So, I firmly believe we need some sort of .AU extenstion that allows for broad open registration.

This would cater for these chess clubs (who would have a prob with org.au and asn.au were tightened) and also solve the existing problems we have for individual bloggers, students etc.

I'd like to see this opening up with com.au and net.au. Others have suggested it should be an open registration directly under .au. Other suggestions have been a new open extension.

 

[Honan]

I didn't mean to convey that id.au is any good, just that it is there for for non-professionals and hobby sites.

Students generally have allocated subdomains/sub folders on .edu's - that seems sufficent to me, or even publishing their paper on a .id.au is a good fit for that purpose.

Chess club can have .asn.au - I don't see anything wrong with that, it's instantly recognisable as an association or club.

Fair enough
I just completely disagree with you
I believe all Australians should be able to publish a website on a .com.au or .net.au without having to state a profit motive
Denying hobbyists. students and the vast majority of Australians who are not eligible for an ABN, is quite simply unfair

 

[snoopy]

I could name several members here that state they want to make money but resent the need for ABN's.

You said they were claiming to be "professional domainers". I don't see any such claims. If someone was making a living from domaining and was in Australia they probably would have an ABN.

the "COM" in .com.au does imply Commercial or Business activity.

Maybe .Net.au should be freely available for all.
or the rejected re-release of info.au should be revisited by auDA.

I really doubt many people are going to be interested in .net.au or .info.au.

I agree the restrictions on id.au limit their usage but would any of them be left in 6 months if de-restricted.

The mega portfolio companies would just bulk register all good Names within days/weeks

Again why would anyone want id.au, restricted or not? It is about appealing as buying a toaster with a Burmese power plug on the end of it.

 

[snoopy]

So, I firmly believe we need some sort of .AU extenstion that allows for broad open registration.

This would cater for these chess clubs (who would have a prob with org.au and asn.au were tightened) and also solve the existing problems we have for individual bloggers, students etc.

I think the new extension idea is never going to be a success. People just don't want something that is unpopular, non standard or second rate.

 

[DavidL]

Fair enough
I just completely disagree with you
I believe all Australians should be able to publish a website on a .com.au or .net.au without having to state a profit motive
Denying hobbyists. students and the vast majority of Australians who are not eligible for an ABN, is quite simply unfair

The argument against this, Joe, is that this will result in a flood of overseas registrations cluttering .AU with non-Australian focused sites.

I don't believe this will happen at all for the following reasons:

1) O/S domainers aren't that interested in .AU. Certainly the bigger guys who could make a dent in the market if they wanted to know that they can get a TM for $300 or so right now and then register as many as they want. The boundaries aren't that high at the moment

2) Even if I was wrong and O/S domainers did come charging in, if they have half a brain they will ensure that the content is Aus-focused and that would be fine IMO. Doesn't make sense to do otherwise. We need to concentrate on value to the end user - the web browser. He/she doesn't care whether the ultimate owner of the domain that has information on the Australian Blue Widget is based overseas or not - just about the quality of the content.

The restrictions that are currently in place don't keep out the hordes of marauding chinese domainers eager to sell viagra - they keep out the clubs, bloggers, students and individuals.

The other point you make which I completely agree with is that individuals want to use com.au. Ask the blogger/student/individual/club their preference and they will invariably say com.au. Shouldn't we be trying to give people what they want?

Who are we to dictate that they can't use what everybody is used to (com.au)and they should be happy with what we tell them even if it isn't well-known or sounds ugly.

 

[DavidL]

I think the new extension idea is never going to be a success. People just don't want something that is unpopular, non standard or second rate.

Yes I agree. That's a big reason why I think com.au should be opened up as it's already the natural preference.

Plus, soon there will be 100's or 1,000's of new gTLDs coming into the fray. .AU may well find it has to fight a bit harder to keep it's market share or risk losing even more Australian sites to other extensions...

 

[FirstPageResults]

sure lets open up ghetto.au for all

j/k

Do you think having the ABN/ACN/BN etc adds a level of assurance to users of .com.au sites, particularly in ecommerce? I do. AFAIK there are many users who feel more comfortable buying from .au sites, knowing that they are dealing with Australian companies who can be held accountable.

Would lifting the restrictions would have an effect on this?

 

[DavidL]

sure lets open up ghetto.au for all

j/k

Do you think having the ABN/ACN/BN etc adds a level of assurance to users of .com.au sites, particularly in ecommerce? I do. AFAIK there are many users who feel more comfortable buying from .au sites, knowing that they are dealing with Australian companies who can be held accountable.

Would lifting the restrictions would have an effect on this?

Yes that is a genuine concern. However it appears that there is little if any correlation between how open a ccTLD is and security issues.

For example, I believe that none of .NZ, .DE, .NL, .CO.UK have such stong eligibility requirements and are no less safe than .AU.

But regardless of the facts, perhaps the comfort is there for users and maybe that would be eroded even if it shouldn't be ... hard to say really.

What is for sure is that more and more people are buying things online using their credit cards overseas anyway and their main means of protection are the credit card companies themselves rather than chasing down the ulimate parent company of the website.

 

[Honan]

The argument against this, Joe, is that this will result in a flood of overseas registrations cluttering .AU with non-Australian focused sites.

........

Perhaps prospective registrants could be asked to produce an Australian credit card

 

[snoopy]

Do you think having the ABN/ACN/BN etc adds a level of assurance to users of .com.au sites, particularly in ecommerce?

Definitely does I think. When was the last time anyone got scammed on a .com.au site.

 

[AndyC]

Update on my Hostess rejection

I gave up waiting for Hostess to approve the registration and registered the name through Netregistry (who I understand owns Hostess?).

There were no problems with Netregistry.

Someone on this forum advised to just use another registrar however if you review registration policy most registrars seem to have this clause:

" you have not previously submitted an application for registration with another registrar, a domain name which is the same as the Domain Name, in circumstances where:
- you are relying upon the same eligibility criteria for both domain names, and
- the Domain Name has previously been rejected by the other registrar, and"

This scared me off last time this happened to us and I ended up losing the domain, more on this in a second.

I could not see the above clause in Netregistry's agreement and regardless they are the registrar that Hostess uses so they are not 'another registrar'.

This is not the first time we have experienced this with Hostess. I would guess that it has happened on 1-2% of our registrations through them. And it seems to happen on names that you would expect you would have the least issues with.

I would really like to understand what registrars / re-sellers are obliged to check in regards to close and substantial connection. The rejections I have had although few, seem to be very random in nature. Surely they are not checking for an obvious link between the organisations name and domain name? So many domains are registered with no obvious relationship. And do they really have the resources / skills to review business / company names / trademarks / common law trading etc.!? Obviously Drop / Netfleet will register any name for anyone as long as they have registered with ACN/ABN etc.

Of particular concern to me is that in the time it can take to go through the rejection process the name is free to be registered by anyone else so I see this as a flaw in the 'first come first served' basis. Some months back we lost a domain that had initially been rejected by Hostess. By the time they approved it, it had been registered by an entity that appeared to be a re-seller of TPP Internet who I understand are also under the Online Growth Solutions umbrella along with Hostess / Netregistry.

We did make a complaint to auda and we were:
- assured that the .au domain name allocation is conducted on a first come first served basis. I disagree because we applied first but lost the name while Hostess screwed about.
- informed that resellers are allowed to register domains for their own use according to para 4.4 of http://www.auda.org.au/policies/auda-2004-04. Now, the domain in question was not related to web / domains / hosting etc. but 4.4 has no restrictions.
- in regard to our comment about possible collusion between resellers / registrars resulting in the pending Hostess registration being registered by another entity with a re-seller relationship to an OGS owned registrar we were asked if we had any documentary evidence which of course we do not.

Since I became aware of 4.4 I have never checked availability of a .au name on a domain re-seller website!

All I would like to see is consistent application of policy by all re-sellers / registrars.

 

[Shane]

I think the restrictions are a good thing, especially for small business. And to be honest, I wish the restrictions were even tighter...

When I started my insurance firm I wanted a name that I could get the exact match domain for. I went through dozens of potential names, and a lot them had no IP issues, but the domain was taken. What made it particularly frustrating is that many of them brought up 404 errors, and when I emailed the owners via the contact details on whois I received very few responses.

I know I'll probably get flamed for saying this on a forum which is all about domaining, but domains names were NOT invented as a speculative investment class.

Domains exist to allow people and businesses to use a nice memorable name instead of a string of numbers to direct people to their website. End of story!

Don't get me wrong though, I'm all for domain monetisation through the development of useful websites, and I have quite a few sites of my own that fit in this category. What bugs me are the people who speculatively register domains and just leave them with 404 errors or on crappy parking pages.

A number of people on this forum argue that AU prices should be dropped and that the ABN requirement should be removed. I am against both of these ideas.

Firstly, if you halved the price of domains, it would simply mean that people would buy twice as many domains.

Regarding ABNs, even though pretty much anyone can register one, it still adds a little bit of authority and trustworthiness to sites with AU domains. By removing this requirement it would simply cheapen the AU 'brand'.

FWIW, here's what I would do if I was in charge of the AU namespace.

When reading these, bear in mind that I'm coming from a businessman's perspective rather than a domainer's perspective. For domainers who regard what they do as a business (which would be quite a few people here I'd say) then I'd like to think that you would fall into the business category.

$100 annual registration fee.

This represents a minuscule amount to any worthwhile business, and would reduce the number of domains being held for speculative purposes. It would also encourage domainers to produce better quality sites to ensure they were covering renewal costs.

Even if you didn't want to develop a site but still thought the name was worthwhile, then $100 annual holding cost is pretty damn low for any decent investment.

Use it or lose it

If you have domain without a worthwhile website, and you've held it for at least 12 months with no content, then anyone with a close connection to the name can go via auda to have it transferred to themselves upon review.

Again, this would encourage domainers to develop their assets rather than wasting them. This would be pretty hard to police, but it's just an idea.

It just frustrates me that some domainers see it as their god-given right to buy all the domains in the world for a dollar each, then hold genuine businesses to ransom whilst they hold out for a 10,000% return on their investment...

 

[DavidL]

This is very strange. I've registered probably around 3,000 domains over the years through:

Intaserve
CrazyDomains
Drop
Netregistry
Hostess
DomainCentral

and others and never had this problem. Can you disclose the domain now you have it?

 

[FirstPageResults]

I've only been rejected once, via NetRegistry trying to use a business name for eligibility criteria even though I had used it with them before for other names and it is associated with my ABN.

 

[DavidL]

$100 annual registration fee.

This represents a minuscule amount to any worthwhile business, and would reduce the number of domains being held for speculative purposes. It would also encourage domainers to produce better quality sites to ensure they were covering renewal costs.

Even if you didn't want to develop a site but still thought the name was worthwhile, then $100 annual holding cost is pretty damn low for any decent investment.

Use it or lose it

If you have domain without a worthwhile website, and you've held it for at least 12 months with no content, then anyone with a close connection to the name can go via auda to have it transferred to themselves upon review.

Again, this would encourage domainers to develop their assets rather than wasting them. This would be pretty hard to police, but it's just an idea.

It just frustrates me that some domainers see it as their god-given right to buy all the domains in the world for a dollar each, then hold genuine businesses to ransom whilst they hold out for a 10,000% return on their investment...

Understand where you are coming from but just addressing these two issue in particular.

$100 Annual Fee. This would just drive the vast majority of small businesses to register 2nd-rate domains in cheaper gTLDs. $100 might well seem a miniscule amount to us for a business but we understand the value of domains.

Faced with the choice of paying $100 pa for GoodDomain.com.au or $10 for Crap-Domain.biz, most small business woners will choose the latter. A domain name is a domain name, right?

The secondary effect this would have is confusion. 'Alternate' extensions would proliferate and mistakes would be made left right and centre by people passing on email addresses, remembering domains from ads etc.

Use it or Lose it. In principal its, not such a bad idea but would be impossible to implement. How do you define 'worthwhile website' - of course you can't and it would be a mess with arguments from all sides with auDA stuck in the middle trying to work it out.


In terms of your general feeling, I don't think it's all that different from real world land buying. The domain name is the vacant block of land and the website is the building you build on it.

Do you think it's a problem if someone buys a block of land outside a city speculating that in several years people might want to buy it off them to build a block of flats?

Some people do & when you consider the housing affordability in our major cities you can see why. But I don't think anyone would feel the answer is to legislate against it (in fact through negative gearing, the government incentivises it) or price the land so high that no one buys it.

 

[Shane]

This would just drive the vast majority of small businesses to register 2nd-rate domains in cheaper gTLDs. $100 might well seem a miniscule amount to us for a business but we understand the value of domains.

Faced with the choice of paying $100 pa for GoodDomain.com.au or $10 for Crap-Domain.biz, most small business woners will choose the latter. A domain name is a domain name, right?

I wouldn't say the "vast majority" would choose a crap domain to save $90. Even for a sole trader, $100 is still a very small amount in the scheme of things.

As a possible consequence, with less speculators buying up every imaginable variation on "home loans" (for example) a business may be able to buy a much better domain with their $100.

The secondary effect this would have is confusion. 'Alternate' extensions would proliferate and mistakes would be made left right and centre by people passing on email addresses, remembering domains from ads etc.

There is certainly potential for that, but I don't think any small business worth it's salt would switch away from AU to save a paltry $90 a year.

Use it or Lose it. In principal its, not such a bad idea but would be impossible to implement. How do you define 'worthwhile website' - of course you can't and it would be a mess with arguments from all sides with auDA stuck in the middle trying to work it out.

For sure, the idea of a worthwhile website is very much open to interpretation, but I'm sure it could be done.

In terms of your general feeling, I don't think it's all that different from real world land buying. The domain name is the vacant block of land and the website is the building you build on it.

Do you think it's a problem if someone buys a block of land outside a city speculating that in several years people might want to buy it off them to build a block of flats?

I see where you're coming from, but I actually think it's quite different.

A block of land is generally not unique, especially if you're talking about 99% of the developments that are around these days.

With a block of land, if the one you want is taken, then you simply move onto the next one in the street. If they are all taken you move onto the next street, and if they are all taken you move onto the next suburb / development.

A domain name however is totally unique. If the one you want is taken, there are only a limited number of usable variations before you have to resort to lengthy and awkward domains with hyphens and whatever.

I think price is one of the big issues. If everyone could go out and buy land for $500 a block and pay very low holding costs, then everyone would do it and we'd end up with even worse housing shortage and affordability issues.

Perhaps current domain registration pricing is undervalued?

If you buy a block of land generally the price will be high enough that you have to put some consideration into whether or not it's a good investment. With the current price of domain registration, anyone can go out and register hundreds of domain names for very little outlay.

Maybe domain registration costs should also be high enough that you have to actually think seriously before purchasing?

 

[snoopy]

Faced with the choice of paying $100 pa for GoodDomain.com.au or $10 for Crap-Domain.biz, most small business woners will choose the latter. A domain name is a domain name, right?

.com.au's used to be $140 and still just about everyone used them. I'm guessing you are joking with the comment above.

 

[Honan]

I think the restrictions are a good thing, especially for small business. And to be honest, I wish the restrictions were even tighter...

When I started my insurance firm I wanted a name that I could get the exact match domain for. I went through dozens of potential names, and a lot them had no IP issues, but the domain was taken. What made it particularly frustrating is that many of them brought up 404 errors, .
....... <snip>
..

The 404 pages are the effect of the current policy
A domainer has to esure a name resoves to a certain kind of web site
A business that registers a name closely relating to their business has no obligation to develop at all

Yes, I agree that the current policy is great for small business
Not very fair to other Australians though

I was once informed that it was not legal to send unsoliciited emails to people using their whois address, so maybe you might like to edit your post