I can see the sense in the policy of preventing 2 letter registrations on
the basis that the country codes are not closed and may be added to from
time to time.

The problem with the 3 letter domain names is that the same is true of
gTLDs, especially with the current proposals being considered.  Of course
there is also a proposal for .shop and shop.com was registered in 1994 and
is registered to Interband Communications. shop.net was registered in 1994
and is registered to Internet Shop.Net Inc. So there goes consistency.

-----Original Message-----
From: Patrick Corliss [mailto:patrick§quad.net.au]
Sent: Friday, 29 September 2000 2:21
To: dns§auda.org.au
Subject: Re: thoughts on .net.au policy.


Aleks Husonwrote wrote:

> I'm writing to ask for opinions on the Connect .net.au policy in regards
to
> their restriction on two letter domains.

In his reply, David Goldstein remarked:

> What the rules are for .com etc I'm not sure.

With respect to refusing 2-letter names, the same.  The policy states:

"3.3 Composition of a Domain Name
A com.au domain name must:
*    Be at least two characters long
*    Contain only letters (a-z), numbers (0-9)and hyphens or a combination
of these
*    Start and end with an alphanumeric character, not a hyphen."

The rules were set by Robert Elz (who manages the .org.au space) so it's
certain to apply to that second-level domain space as well.

You might be interested to know that the 2-letter top-level domain RA.COM
recently went for only $36,740 USD through Afternic.  Another 2-letter is on
sale now.  That's CU.COM.  It could perhaps be snapped up by Commercial
Union?

You'll remember that NetRegistry got au.com and started competing with
com.au.  I suppose that's the fear here.  But I can't see somebody wanting
another country code like "uk" or "nz" to give them a domain like:

                                manchesterunited.uk.net.au        or
                                kiwifruitgrowers.nz.com.au

But you'll note that words like "com" and "net" are prohibted too.  So you
can't have:

                                brokenhill.com.net.au    or
                                brokenhill.net.com.au

Whilst I agree that approach would be pretty confusing, the ban doesn't need
to be extended to ALL possible 2-letter domain names.  I don't see why
General Electric, for example, shouldn't have:

                                            ge.com.au        and/or
                                            ge.net.au

Quite normal and very powerful, I would have thought.

Regards
Patrick Corliss
patrick§quad.net.au



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