From: David Keegel 
Sent: Friday, 8 December 2000 7:01 PM
To: jo.lim@auda.org.au
Subject: Submission to Name Panel


Submission from David Keegel to Name Policy Panel.


  The report talks about "open" domains, but in the .au context it may be
  more accurate to call them "partially open" domains.


  This is because domains like asn.au, com.au, net.au and org.au only
  allow organisational entities to apply for domain names, and the domain
  name must be named after the registrant (the applying organisation),
  and the organisation must be of an appropriate type for the 2LD.


  This is fundamentally different from true "open" domains (like gTLDs
  .com, .net and .org) where an individual (rather than an organisation)
  may apply for a name, and need have no connection to the name at all.


  At some philosophical level, partially open 2LDs like com.au (which is
  only available to commercial organisations) may be considered to have
  more in common with say edu.au (which is only available to educational
  organisations) than with .com where individuals may register names.


  From the Panel report's treatment of 4.1.3 (derivation) suggests that
  it wishes to preserve this fundamental property of the .au domain space,
  that domains are named after the applicant entities.  I applaud this.


  However some aspects of the report seem to chip away at this unifying
  thread which underpins the structure of the .au domain space.
  

  For example, allowing organisations to register trade marks as domain
  names would mean that organisations could apply to register their product
  names rather than their own organisational name.  If the Panel thinks it
  is necessary to register product names in the DNS, then perhaps some
  consideration should be given to a 2LD designed for product names instead.


  My understanding is that trade marks are purely for commercial purposes,
  so their applicability for deliberately non-commercial 2LDs (like org.au,
  asn.au, id.au) is unclear.


  Trying to shoehorn such a wide range of 2LDs into a "one size fits all"
  eligibility model may cause difficulties, unless a radical overhaul or
  re-design of the fundamental structure of the .au space is undertaken.


  It may also be clearer to explain under 4.1.1 that a fundamental eligibility
  criterion is that the applicant is an organisation of the appropriate type
  for the 2LD (at least under the current .au structure).  That is, the
  most important factor is the nature of the applicant entity rather than
  the purposes for which the domain might be used.


  While the idea of "semantic connection" in 4.1.3 is a nice theory,
  it is not clear whether this would be workable, especially as we move
  into a competitive registrar environment where objective critieria
  will be advantageous.


  On the other hand, it is understandable that the Panel may be concerned
  about the situation over the last couple of years where applicants can
  randomly drop letters from a business name and use the remaining letters
  to apply for a domain name.  Perhaps the Panel could consider different
  treatments for abbreviations of business names as distinct from company
  names or other organisational names.


  The report does not seem to have considered 2LDs other than com.au and
  net.au in depth, to determine what the impacts of a "one size fits all"
  policy might be on other 2LDs, particularly those where registration
  is currently undertaken free of charge by volunteers.


  New 2LDs should be carefully considered after an evaluation of the
  test being conducted by ICANN.  Introducing new 2LDs which are not
  thoroughly thought out and designed to fit into the .au domain space
  in a complementary way, may create considerable confusion among users.
  2LDs once introduced are virtually impossible to later delete, and
  this may constrain a later phase of 2LD creation (making a coherent
  structure more difficult if early steps are in a direction different
  to that preferred by policy makers 5 or 10 years hence).

  If purported competition benefits of new 2LDs are a serious issue
  then the matter should be referred to the competition panel for their
  consideration.  There may well be other ways of acheiving an even more
  competitive domain registration market than new 2LDs.


  If a Local Dispute Resolution Procedure (LDRP seems to be the terminology
  used by the ccTLD constituency) is adopted based on the UDRP, then it
  would be appropriate to change the UDRP references to Trade Marks to
  refer instead to things like Australian Company Names (in the case of
  com.au) as a basis for invoking our LDRP.


  Any changes introduced by the Name Policy Panel should be co-ordinated
  with the Competition Panel.  Changes should only be introduced after a
  careful consideration, so that the policy fits together as an integrated
  whole, rather than adopting piecemeal partial changes.