Please find ADNA's first Press Release attached, and also available in
text format below. I will be posting the Minutes of ADNA's AGM and first
Board Meeting on this mailing list shortly.

Peter Gerrand
Secretary, ADNA
________________________________________________
The Australian Domain Name Administration (ADNA)

ADNA has been set up as a peak Internet industry body to develop
policies for the administration of Internet domain names within the .au
name-space.  ADNA has been set up with the encouragement of Robert Elz,
the Administrator of .au. ADNA represents the Australian Internet
industry's first initiative in industry self-regulation, in the spirit
of the new telecommunications regulatory regime.

 ADNA's first Annual General Meeting and first meeting of its Board of
Directors were held in Sydney on 23 June.  The foundation members are
six industry associations (as Full, voting Members) and two current
Domain Name Administrators (as non-voting Associate members).  ADNA
encourages other not-for-profit Associations whose members are
significant users of the Internet in Australia to join and contribute to
policy development.

The six initial Full Members of ADNA are 
AIA (the Australian Internet Alliance)
ATUG (the Australian Telecommunications Users Group)
intiaa (the Internet Industry Association of Australia)
SAIA (the South Australian Internet Association)
Tradegate Australia (including the Electronic Commerce Association) and
WAIA (the Western Australian Internet Association).

The two initial Associate Members are
Michael Malone (DNA for asn.au) and
Melbourne IT (DNA for com.au).

Luke Carruthers of intiaa agreed to continue as interim Chairperson of
ADNA until a suitable independent Chair can be appointed.  Mark Hughes
of Tradegate was re-elected Treasurer, and Professor Peter Gerrand of
Melbourne IT was re-elected as Secretary of ADNA.  The other Directors
appointed to the initial ADNA Board are Allan Horsely (ATUG), Kevin Dinn
(AIA), Michael Malone, Steve Baxter (SAIA) and Peter Cooper (WAIA).

The ADNA Board of Directors decided that their highest priority in 1997
will be the provision of a competitive market in domain names for the
Australian business sector.  This is likely to include recommendation of
additional second-level domains (such as tm.au for trademarks and biz.au
for business names) and competition within existing and new second-level
domains (such as com.au and net.au). 

Working Groups have been already set up by ADNA to develop policies for 
1. selection criteria for new domains
2. selection criteria for new Domain Name Administrators (DNAs)
3. a Code of Practice for DNAs
and to develop software to support multiple DNAs within domains.

Timetable.  It is planned to issue draft Policies via a new adna.asn.au
virtual website by Monday 30 June, and to invite public comment on these
drafts via the dns§intiaa.asn.au mailing list until 31 July. Member
Associations of ADNA will also ensure that these
policies are distributed to their own members and other interested
parties.

The ADNA Board will meet again on 18 August to review the public
feedback to the draft policies, and then endorse the amended policies
for approval by Robert Elz.  Applications for new domains and new DNAs
will then be sought, in line with the new policies, with a deadline of
end of August for applications. 

(END)

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