Hello all,

As you all probably know, ADNA is working towards (among other things)
introducing a new second level domain for products: .pr.au

There are several issues I am concerned about with this which have been
debated at length and I would like to see the general opinion on these:

Firstly, name allocation is to be on a first come first served basis. The
justification for the policies in .com.au which prevent people registering
generic names is that they would give a company an unfair advantage in an
industry sector. eg. insurance.com.au, pizza.com.au, cars.com.au, ... Seems
to me that this logic applies as much, if not more, to .pr.au. After all we
are talking about generic classes of products (eg. pizza.pr.au).

The argument most often presented is that the people are crying out for a
first come first served 2LD. My opinion is if that is what they want then
that is what we should setup (eg .x.au) where anything goes - .pr.au is for
products, not a free for all.

The second issue is the timing of starting registrations on .pr.au. My
opinion is that it is vital that it doesn't happen until competition is in
place - even if this delays the release. It is no doubt easier to start a
new 2LD with a single registrar than with multiple ones but if we start
.pr.au with a single registrar then this will create yet another monopoly -
one with a massive advantage. When they open for registrations there will
be a flood of new registrations including:

- every generic name under the sun
- everybody who couldn't get their desired name in .com.au
- everybody who wants to grab every version of their name in the DNS

This will probably number in the 10's of 1000's so it seems totally
unacceptable that one company should get this windfall.

So the questions are:
1. Should .pr.au be first come first served?
2. If yes - then why not make .com.au the same?
3. Should we create a new 2ld for first come first served instead?
4. Should we allow new 2lds to be launched before competing registrars exist?

Regards

--
Kevin Dinn ____________________    o    _          _--_|\    ZIP P/L 
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     Director - Zip Internet Professionals Pty Ltd (www.zip.com.au)
    Managing Director - NetPort Systems Pty Ltd (www.netport.com.au)
    Deputy Chairman - Internet Industry Association (www.iia.net.au)
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