From: David Harry 
Sent: Friday, 12 October 2007 3:13 PM
To: jo.lim@auda.org.au
Subject: Draft Recommendations, September 2007

Attention: Jo Lim
Chief Policy Officer, auDA

We are writing in response to the draft document re: recommendations by the auDA concerning the .au domain 
extension as such.

Issue 1: Should .au be opened up to direct registrations (eg.
domainname.au)?

Draft Recommendation 1:
 
The Panel recommends that .au should not be opened up to direct registrations at this time.


The USA released the domain extension being the .us a while ago and it has proven to be a success with 
thousands of registrations and it is clear that this domain is for the USA market and with the possible 
release of a .au extension would also clearly state that this is for the Australian market.

Many countries have extensions such as .it, .eu, .tv, .cm, .co .uk, and many more which communicates that 
this extension is for that specific country.
The .com.au is suitable for Australian's but on the global stage it doesn't work!! We are not encouraging 
anyone to be able to register a .au who is not based in Australia we are however stating that Australian 
individuals /businesses should be given the opportunity to register such an extension based on similar 
criteria as a com.au name.

We have stats and traffic reports that clearly show that many Australians type domain names into the web 
browser with a .au extension not .com.au.

It would inject thousands of dollars into the domain name industry and encourage more online growth in 
this market space.

In reading many responses of late we are concerned with the narrow minded individuals who comment with no 
concrete evidence or stats to support such remarks and this can have negative impact on this growing 
industry.

Our strong recommendation is to enable Australian individuals/businesses to register .au domains based 
on a similar criteria as one would register a .com.au domain name.

Regards,

David Harry