Hello Chris,

Below is and email that every registrant is getting about this change
over. As a reseller and trusted service provider to a lot of people we are
getting calls from people who have never heard of the auDA before this and
think that this email is SPAMING for their business behind our back.
Now I know that some people jump to conclusion and do not read and
understand the implication of a change such as this but to all of a sudden
be in their eyes these issues have been forced on them with no prior
warnings.
A few points that were raised by registrants.

- What gives auDA the right to SPAM me on behalf of Melb IT. (As we know
the majority of .com.au names will be with them and the below email look
as if it's from the registrar at a glance, and mostly people don't read
email properly if they think it's SPAM [now anther word comes to mind but
I'll e nice])
- Where can I get access to the information that auDA has about me and
where are their policies on its use. (It raised the thought in my mind
that there is no polices on auDA's own use of whois data only registry,
registrar reseller and registrant use, I think that this needs to be
address as auDA seems to have rights beyond the meager mortals that you
represent.)
- Who's idea was it to email, does the auDA know that SPAM gets deleted?
(This person was very angry : (
- Why was this not sent out in the post from a government department like
with electricity and telecommunications usage some time ago? Also before
the change to give people time to react and learn? (With this I some how
agree, email was not a good option for educating the public and mail outs
to all would have been a better option not only people with domain names.)
- Why did I get this email x amount of times? (Most registrants of
administrators of domain name more than one listing, would not have it
been really easy to cull the records and take out double ups.)
Next is the usage policy for direct lookups to AusRegistry, we have, as
you may or may not know, been Black Banned from lookups to the
whois.ausregistry.net.au server and as a cause all .com.au names that we
currently sell come up as available. Our technical manager has raised
these concerns with the auDA and also AusRegistry. We have found that
AusRegistry don't have provisions for resellers and we are support to go
through our reseller. Our reseller does not have whois services yet (if
ever) as they do direct lookups.
Jo as responded to an email from our technical manager about this and says
that our service will be increased to allow us the lookups. Still we have
not received response from AusRegistry on this and have lost a whole days
registrantions as a cause.
I would appreciate an answer to these issues on the email and also
regarding provision on lookups for resellers direct to the registry as
this seems like it has not been thought out very well in both situations.
Regards,

Michael-Pappas
Click'nGo! Operations.

<email to all .au registrants.>
------

auDA's new Australian domain name regime and com.au names
.au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA) is the government-endorsed manager of
Australian domain names (see http://www.auda.org.au).
You are being sent this email because you are listed in the com.au
database as the administrative contact for the above com.au name.
This email contains important information about the above domain name. If
you are no longer the administrative contact and you know who has replaced
you, please urgently forward this email to them. If you do not know who
has replaced you forward this email to noadmin&#167;auda.org.au
Today, auDA introduced a new domain name regime and new domain name policy
rules. This will affect your domain name in the following ways.
Under the new system, each domain name has a Registrar of Record entered
in the database. Your Registrar of Record is Melbourne IT Ltd. This is
because when you licensed or last renewed the domain name, you did so
directly through Melbourne IT Ltd or through one of their domain name
resellers.
When your domain name licence expires you can renew it through your
Registrar of Record or you may decide to transfer to another auDA
Accredited Registrar, in which case they will become your new Registrar of
Record. The cost of renewal may vary from registrar to registrar. It is
important to check the service offerings and charges of each registrar
before making your choice. A list of registrars and links to their
websites is available at http://www.auda.org.au/registrars
If you have any queries about your domain name you should contact
Melbourne IT Ltd or the reseller you normally deal with.
For more information about auDA and the new domain name regime and policy
rules, see http://www.auda.org.au