> 
> This was my original approach - to make the criteria so specific that the
> applicant virtually knew whether they would be successful before the
> application went in. Since then, however, there have been several people
> arguing to make the criteria less stringent and more vague and this is
> leaving us at the point where no final version of the criteria can be
> submitted that more than about 50% of the contributors agree on.


I like this method. If the rules are clear cut and laid out for all to see
then there is no problem - yes or no.
But there is no reason to make the guidlines overly harsh to prevent entry
to all but very very well financed entries.


I see the gtld constrainst as being quite high for anything under .au.


>     (a) Applicant must have at least US$500,000 in commercial general
>liability insurance. 
>
>    (b) Applicant must affirm that it will engage the equivalent of at
>least five full time employees in its registration activities. 

This is the figure also quoted by Peter, .com.au does have a slightly
complex policy (more complex than first in first served) but if Melbourne
IT at their peak employ 10 people now and two other registries open then
still only ten people need to employed in total.

The point below about having $300k handy is good, this way we could waiver
the need to have 5 staff, have it one staff member during business hours
because if a compnay has $300k readily at hand new staff should be less of
a problem.

>
>     (c) Applicant must have a minimum of US$300,000 in liquid capital
>immediately available in Applicant's name. Capital
>     can be a guaranteed bank loan, a guaranteed credit line or letter of

>credit from a recognized financial institution, or any
>     other form of liquid capital. 
>
>     (d) Applicant must hold an existing SLD (second level domain or
> third level domain if operating under an ISO-3166
>     country level domain), which when checked via
>http://www.gtld-mou.org/dnswalk.html, produces no distinct warning
>     messages. The holder is to be determined via queries to public data
>bases maintained by existing Internet Registrars.


What is the purpose of the dnswalk ?




Stephen Baxter                            SE Network Access
SE Network Access                         http://www.senet.com.au
Direct Internet Access                    222 Grote Street
phone : +61 8 8221 5221                   Adelaide 5000
fax   : +61 8 8221 5220

<http://www.senet.com.au/~steve/pgp.html for Public Key>