From: Angus.Sprott@tourism.tas.gov.au 
Sent: Thursday, 15 February 2001 17:25
To: comments@auda.org.au
Subject: Proposed changes to the au namespace


In response to the article in Tuesday's Australian, I would like to offer an opinion from 
Tourism Tasmania's viewpoint. We have attempted on several occasions to argue our case for 
the release of tasmania.com.au as an appropriate domain name for the promotion of Tasmania. 
I will not outline my arguement here but have attached a letter from one of our approaches 
to INA. Tourism Tasmania would fully support the release of 'place name' domain names, 
perhaps through a standing committee as simple rules may lead to disputes.

We would also like to note that although our use of 'tasmania.com.au' was rejected there 
is a company in the Northern Territory who was awarded the domain name 'tas.com.au'. Tas, 
is clearly the well known and well used abbreviation for Tasmania. They must have qualified 
under one set of rules and been approved, but had we been first and applied we would have 
beeen rejected as the rule set would have been different. Should any new policies be 
enforced we would like to see reterospective action taken and have these names removed 
from their current licencee, perhaps when their current registrations next expire.

Thirdly, we believe that other 2lds could be easily created such as travel.au, enabling the 
travel industry their own distinct identity. An example of another country leading the way 
in this regard is Ireland, ' http://www.ireland.travel.ie '. We believe that ICAAN's decision 
to reject the .travel tld need not be reflected in the australian domain space, and that we 
in fact could help to lead the way in offering suitable alternate 2nd level domains. Travel 
is one to the biggest industries, and import erners for Australia and would certainly justify 
it's domain space existence.

regards
Angus
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Angus Sprott
Manager Electronic Distribution
Tourism Tasmania