From: james acland 
Sent: Friday, 30 July 2004 4:24 PM
To: jo.lim@auda.org.au
Subject: Restrictions on Names

Jo Lim
Chief Policy Officer
auDA

People should be allowed to register geographic names
in in com.au and net.au. 

Australia has survived the same word being used in
com.au and gov.au and org.au and net.au. What is so
special about the new community geographic second
level domains? 

Are they so fragile that they need extraordinary
protection? 

If the new domains had not been created there might be
a case for maintaining the existing restriction. Now
there is no reason for the restriction and no reason
why people whose business name coincides with one of
over 20,000 geographic names should not be able to get
a com.au or net.au

Those people are just as much part of the community as 
enthusiasts for 'portals'. They have not been heard 
because there aren't public servants pushing barrows 
for them the way the new domains were pushed. 

I would have more faith in assertions about "community 
interest" if it was clear that many community groups 
had bothered to register .org or .net or .com names 
and then build portals which are kept up to date and 
get lots and lots of visitors. They have not. There 
are very few community portals. That is because of 
lack of interest, not because a magic name was 
unavailable.

Don't be bullied by a few noisy barrow pushers who
claim to represent communities and get heard just
because they know the restriction is being considered

James Acland