I sympathise with Kevin's comments - both on the difficulty of
putting together a working document, and on having to keep one's
real job operational while trying to keep up with this 'pro bono'
public interest work.

I think that trying to address the issues (criteria, code of
practice, etc) as separate issues may have made the task more
difficult.  My suggestion is that we produce one policy statement
per 2LD that ADNA has an interest in - so for now .com.au.  If parts
of that statement apply to more than one 2LD (perhaps the code of
practice), then its easy to reference an external document.  But I
think to be successful an overall policy statement will be required
for each 2LD and I think it should include:

1. General statement of what the 2LD is about and how it is
administered.
2. Criteria for annual license renewal
3. Criteria for new DNA licenses
4. Code of Practice
5. 2LD name allocation policy

The policy statement for .com.au might look a bit as follows:

*******************

ADNA .COM.AU DOMAIN POLICY STATEMENT

1. GENERAL
The .com.au domain is intended for commercial for-profit
organisations and is administered by one or more DNAs.  ADNA offers
non-exclusive licenses to organisations who are DNAs in the .com.au
2LD.  Licenses are initially granted subject to the DNA meeting the
'Criteria for New .com.au DNAs' and are automatically renewed
annually subject to the DNA continuing to meet the 'Criteria for
Annual License Renewal for .com.au DNAs'.  Licenses are valid for
one year or part thereof, starting on 1 July and ending on 30 June.

2. CRITERIA FOR ANNUAL LICENSE RENEWAL:
A license to be a DNA in .com.au will be automatically renewed for
existing .com.au DNAs meeting the following criteria:

2.1 DNAs must be an incorporated body.
2.2 DNAs must pay annual renewal fees as set from time to time by
ADNA.  The fee for 1997/1998 is set at  $.25c per .com.au domain
name registered by the DNA.
2.3 DNAs must have a permanent connection to the Internet.
2.4 DNAs must be covered by at least $1,000,000 professional
indemnity insurance.
2.5     DNAs must abide by the Code of Practice as revised by ADNA
from time to time.

3. CRITERIA FOR NEW DNA LICENSES
DNA applicants must meet all criteria for Annual License Renewal
plus:

3.1 Applicants for DNA roles must pay an application fee as set from
time to time by ADNA.  The fee for 1997/1998 is $5,000.  This
amount, minus any administrative costs incurred in processing the
application, is refundable to unsuccessful DNA applicants.
4. ADNA CODE OF PRACTICE
Refer to separate ADNA Code of Practice.

5. COM.AU NAME ALLOCATION POLICY
This policy applies from 24th February 1997 and replaces the policy
which applied from 1st November 1996. All existing registered domain
names, including those which do not conform to this policy, will be
honoured.  This policy governs only the third level domain name
space immediately within COM.AU and does not govern any other domain
name spaces.

5.1 GENERAL
The purpose of the .com.au domain name space is to provide
Australian commercial organisations with a domain name which is:

? unique - the system will not accept applications for domain names
that already exist in the AUNIC registry.
? identified with the organisation
? not confused with other organisations' domain names

Names that meet the .com.au rules as detailed below will be issued
on a first come first served basis.

5.2 INCLUSIONS
Any legal entity which is a commercial entity that trades in
Australia can register a COM.AU domain name.  For the purposes of
this policy a commercial entity is considered to be one that exists
to make a profit.  Examples include companies, statutory
corporations or authorities, incorporated associations, partnerships
and sole traders.

A commercial entity is allowed one COM.AU domain name. Where
separate commercial entities exist within a parent entity (for
example, separate business names within a parent company), both the
parent company and the separate commercial entities may apply for a
domain name.

5.3 EXCLUSIONS
We recommend that certain other organisations obtain domain names in
other second level domains as follows:

.asn.au for not-for-profit organisations
.gov.au for government organisations
.edu.au for educational organisations

5.4 NAME ALLOCATION RULES
Each domain name in .com.au must:

5.4.1 Be at least two characters long
5.4.2 Contain only alphanumeric characters (i.e. a-z, A-Z, 0-9) and
hyphens
5.4.3 Start and finish with an alphanumeric character
5.4.4 Not be an Australian place name which has a postcode.
5.4.5 Be directly derived from the legal name of the commercial
entity;  the domain name can only be derived from the characters in
the full legal name of the commercial entity in the order in which
they appear. Additional characters that do not appear in the full
legal name of the commercial entity can not be used.
5.4.6 Not be a generic word describing products (goods or services),
industries, industry sectors, or organisations.  Examples of
unacceptable domain names include: beer (product), banking
(industry), industrial (industry), company (organisation type).
Generic phrases comprising of two or more generic words are allowed.

*************************

Comments please, folks on any or all, and specifically:

































































*Section 2.2 fee levels?
*Section 5, basically lifted from the Melbourne IT .com.au policy
pages
*Section 5.4.6 - can this criteria be done by reference to an
external list of some sort.  If we accept that there will be two
organisations operating in the one domain, then the criteria for
approval and disapproval must be objective rather than subjective -
else there will be inconsistency in decisions.

One of the tests of the above overall policy statement is to see how
well it fits with existing practice.  Peter, if you were to
hypothetically 'renew your .com.au licence' in accordance with the
above, what problems would you see?

The same framework could be used for other 2LDs with changes to fee
scales, rules for name allocation, etc.

Regards, Mark


 * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
*  Message From : HUGHES, MARK          *
*  Location     : AUSTRALIA-CCA HDQ     *
*  KOMAIL ID    : N17503  (CCAMCQN1)    *
*  Date and Time: 08/04/97  18:20:42    *
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