Rick W suggested I subscribe and crosspost this into this list. 
Hopefully you lot have a longer attention span that the
hairdressers in aussie-isp and Adam, I got your reply advertising
AUSRC as a solution for my proposal already ta. 

I notice an accc person is on the list so an opinion from thou
wouldn't go amiss.

The proposition I'm putting forward for debate is simply that the
portability or non-portability of 3LD's should be indicated to a
prospect _in a proactive manner_.

----- Forwarded message from Alastair Waddell <awaddell&#167;cyberlabs.com.au> -----


What this is about is the promotion of alternate 2LDs in the
local market, that is, in competition with com.au and net.au

I'd like to introduce some debate, which may even help socially
engineer an ethic, around the subject of portability.


  I believe that if one is to offer a product in competition and
  _promote it as a viable alternative_ then there are some
  fundamentals that the provider is _obligated_ to make the
  consumer aware of. 

In short, if you are sold a domain as an alternative 3LD, and MIT
and connect will love this, then I suggest you've been 'hard done
by' if it isn't portable, or if it's non-portability isn't
publicised and advice given about it's usefullness once you no
longer require services from the seller.

To date I'm aware of the active marketing of

aust.com
aus.com

I suggest to any company or individual paying for subdomains of a
2LD where authority for that 3LD cannot be redelegated, that the
value of that domain is near to nothing as it is for ever
dependent on a maintained relationship with the owner of the 2LD.

ie. In the above exampe you may as well have <domain>.ozemail.com
for all that it's worth to you; sure it looks more unique, but
beyond that simple perception is a reality that is contrary to
what consumers might be 'generally expected to assume'.

This also suggests a dubious manner, whether intentional or not,
of locking a customer into services, which sounds very
anti-competitive to me. 


Given that the principle thrust of marketing of domains is

o unique identity
o ability to move this identity (web/mail) to any isp

  I strongly recommend that advertising of domains be subject to
  guidelines of the Trade Practices Act or equivilent. Certainly
  the same level of 'watchdogging' that is now being paid to
  unlimited accounts is equally justified in the monitoring of
  advertising and marketing of domains. 

In the Big Picture, domains - their allocation and management are
much more worthy of the attention of the ACCC than access
accounts. 

I emailed ozemail and they advised that they couldn't redelegate
a subdomain of aust.com. I'm not saying OzEmail are doing
anything wrong; I rang a sales droid also (by way of double
checking) and they too said the domain wasn't portable (well,
actually I couln't make myself understood - they kept coming back
to thinking I wanted to redelegate aust.com).


Personally I think this lack of magnanimity lacks vision.

Regards,
-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Alastair Waddell	         o Tel +61 3 96 400-400  	 
Technical Administrator          o Fax +61 3 9222-1363 
CyberLabs	                 o http://www.cyberlabs.com.au		
Queen Street, Melbourne

+ Virtual Services + DNS Maintenance + ISP Co-location + Internetworking
----
Email "unsubscribe aussie-isp" to majordomo&#167;aussie.net to be removed.
Reminder: Save $50 if you register for ISP.au '98 before 7th June

----- End forwarded message -----

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Alastair Waddell	         o Tel +61 3 96 400-400  	 
Technical Administrator          o Fax +61 3 9222-1363 
CyberLabs	                 o http://www.cyberlabs.com.au		
Queen Street, Melbourne

+ Virtual Services + DNS Maintenance + ISP Co-location + Internetworking