Edwin Groothuis [edwin§mavetju.org] wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 01:01:01PM +1000, Vic Cinc wrote:
> > at the recent auda conference, registrars overwhelmingly voted for
> > opening the up top level .au space for registration. again I think
> > many cctlds have done this and the sky hasnt fallen in.
> 
> They're not the smartest cookies these registrars...
> 
> Are you saying they like to be able to sell only one virtual item
> (after all, the domain name business is nothing more than a wind
> trade. It doesn't cost anything to produce), instead of N virtual
> items?
> 
> Specially with the fear campaign of "protecting your IP", big
> businesses which have a lot to lose will register foo.com.au,
> foo.bar.au and foo.org.au. That is *three* sells instead of one
> sell. Once it is possible to register under .au, nobody will register
> under com.au anymore.

if registrars stand to gain or not is irrelavent to policy.

as chris reminded us during the conference auda is not there to benefit
registrars and by that token neither is auda there to hinder registrars.

since registrars loses and costs have no impact on policy, then
likewise registrar gains should have no impact on policy whatsoever.

the only fact that is worth discussing is: does a demand exist for xyz.au?

the answer is overwhelmingly yes

> Can you name me one country, besides the .us domain which smarty
> chose state.us, which moved from a similar naming system as there
> is in Japan, the UK, Australia, Korea etc to a toplevel one?

france, italy, germany come to mind, there are plenty of others I am sure.

Vic