Michale Malone wrote: 
> If competition is the appropriate response, then a
> recommendation of this should be presented to Melbourne IT. Even then,
> M-IT will need to be satisfied that the framework is workable.

then David Keegel asked:
>I thought the point of ADNA in the short term was to open up com.au
>to competition by having multiple DNAs maintaining com.au.  Obviously
>Melbourne IT would be expected to be one of the DNAs for com.au, but
>the organisations which proposed to set up biz.au would probably also
>want to be DNAs for com.au as well.
> 
>Is this what ADNA is wanting to do, or is it going for the old
>fashioned "one domain -> one DNA" approach?

Personal opinion only:

Opening up competition by adding 2LDs and having a single DNA for each would
be very nice from Melbourne IT's point of view (though I don't claim to
speak for them and encourage them to speak for themselves on this).

.COM.AU has a massive market presence and massive market advantage. If
Melbourne IT continued to be alone in .COM.AU, they would effectively have
no competition and would be selling a hundred names to one against other
domains. It would be a long time before any other domain could build
anything remotely resembling the market punch of .COM.AU, and then only with
careful marketing and a lot of effort.

Domains, whether the purists like it or not, carry their own feel and do (at
least for now) serve a very primitive indexing function. They say something
about their owners. Many more people will want .COM.AU domains than are
likely to want .BIZ.AU (or whatever).

For competition to be meaningful in the commercial domains, it must be
competitive *within* the domains. While there will inevitably be competitive
issues between domains (an issue that needs good policy to handle), the real
game will be within domains and especially within .COM.AU.

Regards, K.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karl Auer: kauer§pcug.org.au                    +61-6-2494627 (bh)
           http://www.pcug.org.au/~kauer/       +61-6-2486607 (ah)

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