From: Brett Fenton 
Sent: Monday, 3 April 2006 4:55 PM
To: Jo Lim
Subject: Re: domain monetisation - draft issues paper

Hi Jo,

Thanks for the opportunity to comment.

My comments are as follows:

a) General Comments

Most registrars already have clients that have significant portfolios of domain names, 
many used for monetization. The space has now been open (and the policy requirements 
relaxed) for around 4 years. My view is the horse has well and truly bolted and 
accordingly the submissions to date predicting doom and gloom certainly have not 
precipitated.

I think the general principles of a robust, competitive model for the .au space certainly 
require allowing registrations for the purposes of securing click through traffic. 

In other spaces specifically there have been issues with quantifiable percentages of the 
name space being used in this manner. Clearly that may be an issue if the retail price 
on a .au domain lowers to a value in line with say domains in the .com/.net spaces. At 
the moment securing say 5% of the name space represents an annualized cost of around 
$1M which is a significant gamble for any domainer to recover costs though click through 
traffic. Having said that I do favor a model in which an entity can only be listed as 
the Registrant of a fixed number of domain names (say 1000-2000). Calls for 1-2 domains 
per entity by other submissions are disingenuous as it completely invalidates the 
existing model where businesses have been encouraged to register products, services, etc.

I will also note other submissions have included mistyped domains leading to advertising 
pages. This will not happen given the existing policy related to 'typo-squatting'. 

As a final note I would suggest that if auDA was to implement a policy disallowing a 
specific (business) use of a domain name that auDA will then have moved out of domain 
based policy and into web content based policy. I believe that this sets a dangerous 
precedent and has the potential to provide a less than desired outcome for all Australian 
Internet users. 

In summary NetRegistry supports the use of domains for the purposes of generating traffic. 

b) Specific Comments

1) Page 2, Paragraph 6.

We looked at some examples during the panel discussion that were in place clearly for the 
purpose of monetization. However the landing site did in fact contain some nominal content.

This has implications for Option 1 of the implementation options (Page 4). 
Which basically states that being an information portal is okay, so long as there is content 
there. This review exercise would appear to be something of a waste if circumvention is as 
simple as providing some nominal content. 

Content becomes very difficult to build policy around and is something I have strong views 
in regards to any participation from auDA in developing any content based policy. So there 
is something of a Catch 22.

2) Page 4, "IMPLEMENTATION OPTIONS"

"This would mean that:

-registrars would be ..... "

I believe that this outcome would not be acceptable to Registrars in general. 
How would a Registrar at the time of processing an application be able to take a view that 
the Registration "appears to have been made for the primary purpose of domain monetization"? 
Clearly this is something that occurs after the domain is registered. 

I think we need to clearly separate intended use from the allocation and eligibility policy, 
in the same way we do say on the prohibition of sale of domain names. As an analogy there is 
no requirement for a Registrar to reject an application on the likelihood that the intended 
use is subsequent sale to a third party. 

The implementation option should be like most other core auDA policy and be complaint driven. 
If the decision is made to ban the use of domains for monetization then the onus should fall 
to auDA to investigate complaints of domain use for monetization and not Registrars at the 
point of application processing. 

Regards,
Brett Fenton