> 	    Seek declaration by the ACA as the manager of electronic
> 	    addressing for Internet communications services Under
> 	    legislation to take effect from July 1997, the ACA (the
> 	    body allocated regulatory management of the
> 	    telecommunications industry post deregulation, to be made
> 	    up of Austel and the Spectrum Management Authority) has the
> 	    power to appoint an organisation as manager of electronic
> 	    addressing for Internet communications services. Such an
> 	    appointment would confer upon the organisation governmental
> 	    authority.
> 
> 
> This is utterly unrelated to DNS. It also points to a complete lack of
> understanding of what an internet address is, how they are allocated and
> what the substantive issues are surrounding IPv4 and IPv6 addresses. This
> is not a matter for an ADNA body to attempt to regulate. The implications
> for how Intiaa believe addresses should be obtained are not good. In the
> context of a fully commercialized view of the .AU namespace...

George, I think you are confusing the meaning of the term "addressing"
in legislature with the concept of IP addressing.  They are different
things.  ADNA does not have anything to do with IP addressing.  

> Whilst the SMA has the power, it has NOT shown any intent to do such an
> appointment, and this would be a retrograde act in my opinion. I would
> expect vigorous opposition to this move to come from several quarters.

The bodies that will make up the SMA have indicated (here I paraphrase,
and welcome comments from those from Austel) that their preference is
for the industry to develop this body itself.  They have displayed 
interest, and have indeed been part of the restructuring process since the
beginning.  

> More directly relevant to DNS matters, this document fails to
> understand the extent to which domains under .AU are a non-financial
> issue but relate to provisioning of namespaces for public-interest
> goals. Its statement regarding legacy domains (edu, oz, org, net, conf,
> gov, asn) is weak, and the lack of statement regarding how similar
> non-commercial domains can be instantiated very worrying. Financial
> probity of DNA is very important, but so are the policy issues surronding
> access to names and I believe the ACA and ACCC have a minor role to play
> in most cases outside of business-related naming. 

Perhaps you could elaborate further on where you perceive this weekness,
and how it could be corrected?  I believe the intent with respect to
the domains which do not sustain as much traffic (such as gov.au, edu.au, 
asn.au) is to enable them to retain their current status (i.e. not being
charged for, being run by people appointed to the task) with an "if it
isn't broken, don't fix it" philosophy, and indeed allow new domains to
be created with similar criteria.

> I very strongly urge DNS list members to review the documents at
> 
> 	http://www.iahc.org/
> 
> and consider the applicability of the MoU to this country. The MoU is
> to be found at:
> 
> 	http://www.iahc.org/gTLD-MoU.html

This document is indeed full of excellent recommendations, and is to
a degree what current proposals in Australia have been based on.  Most
of its recommendations are included, with some tightening of the areas 
it remains vague on.  

> I do not believe they are appropriate. Furthermore I do not believe
> key stakeholders from domains such as csiro.au edu.au oz.au and gov.au
> can achieve anything like convergeance on this proposal in the time
> available.

I'm not sure what you mean by convergence here, but most of the
DNA's for the above domains you list have been aware if not participating
in the restructuring process since its inception.  It is unfortunate
that some of them in particular	are currently restricted in this
participation.

> About the only part of this process I can see support for is that the
> ADNA voting  membership is restricted to not-for-profit bodies, and I
> note that Intiaa proposes itself, ISOC-AU and at least three others.
> 
> I am interested in who these are perceived to be at this stage. If it
> was the regional IA bodies, this would mean vesting the top-level domain
> space of australia in a body dominated by ISPs or bodies themselves dominated
> by ISPs and this is highly inappropriate. (If I mis-characterize the regional
> IA bodies, please forgive me. This is my understanding at this time and I
> welcome being set straight on that)

There is provision in the structure for appopriate bodies to apply and be
accepted for membership.  



Luke Carruthers
Magna Data
Internet Solutions Provider