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Battle For Control Of .au Domain
batty writes: "The Sydney Morning Herald has this article about how Robert Elz, the bloke who connected Australia to the internet in 1984, is refusing to hand domain name authority over to auDomain Administration, the body set up by the politician who introduced Internet censorship to Australia. They're not complaining that Mr. Elz is refusing to hand over control, they just can't handle him refusing to even give them an answer. That's a pretty loud 'Bugger Off' in my book. It is largely due to Mr. Elz's work that Australia doesn't have a 'cybersquatting' problem. I'm not entirely sure what to make of this quote: 'There is almost no litigation in that area ... But we feel the time has come to move on .'"
Although all us aussies should be thankful to Elz for his service, there are an awful lots us pissed of with the guy. Basically If you do not follow his rules _to the letter_ any further enquires from you are ignored - no your request failed because... - just ignored. He also typifies the "old school" with the many "mates rates" deals to old friends...
No judgements made....plusses and minuses....
Is that the system that screwed up California's electricity supply, and England's rail system? Yeah, I heard of that.
He was an online panelist in a discussion of the hyped up sell off of com.au to MelbourneIT that was held by the Four Corners (current affairs) program on Auntie ABC (the national broadcaster in Australia).
Check out the forum comments.
And for a glimpse at his sense of humour, try RFC 1924. He really had me going!
I can see why it looks this way to an outsider, but you've got it wrong. The US celebrates individualism and the resulting diversity. We don't HATE people just because they are different from us, even if they do choose the "NFL" attitude. Not all Americans are the same; we don't have nor cling to a national identity.
Braggadoccio and macho sell well in the media (and apparently overseas too, which is why you are so familiar with it) but it should be fairly obvious that it is not unique to the US since we as English speakers had to go outside of the language several times to borrow the words to describe it.
your brought up on it "Im da man", "I am the greatest", "You can't play me" etc.
Another thing we Americans don't tend to do is to attempt to characterize the people of other countries and explain not only how bad they are, but why as if we are experts on what it's like to grow up in a place that we didn't grow up in.
We in Australia really don't give a shit how good you think you are
apparently, you do give a shit since it makes you HATE ... your word.
This means we draw a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
Just as a usage note, that's a solid line. The expression "drawing a fine line" means that it is subtle what the difference is, and the argument you present does not hinge on subtlety. Or wait, maybe it is a subtle point: are you claiming you presented this confidently, rather than arrogantly? :)
The phrase anal retention actually literally means refusing to shit as a child.. as if something the child had created was too important to part with. Ive had to deal with this man first hand to register .org.au names.. some of my tech friends have also had trouble with name registration .. from aborignal groups to charity causes.. he doesnt seem to let up.
Theres a fine line between protecting us from cybersqatting and other domain name extortion and actually becoming part of the problem by being a bottleneck for the internet communities growth in australia.
give it up elz geez
Mr Elz as you can see from the flurry of diatribe thats popped up in the forum, is not well liked here in .au
Cybersquatting is not a problem for .com.au simply because you needed to have an RBN (and recently at least an ABN with a listed trading name) in order to register the domain name.
Dont think that he is being some matyr for the cause, hes just being his usual pain in the friggen ass.
The similar situation was in the .cz TLD (Czech
Republic) about two or three years ago. The positive thing was, that the registration rules
were very strict (for example: only one domain
for one subject), there was no cybersquatting, etc.
But this approach was unbearable, because there always were people who did not agree with the TLD maintainer's decision. So the CZ-NIC (the administrative maintainer of .cz TLD) decided to
make the rules more liberal, and charge maintainance fee
for every domain. At first, there was a huge
explosion of new registrations, but after few
months, the situation calmed down a bit and now
it is perfectly OK.
So the "enlightened" ruler of the TLD is a good thing (especially from the technical point of view), but I think a liberal approach makes more people happy (even though the technical status of many zones in .cz sucks).
He is the sole reason the .au namespace has any coherency. He has been quite passionate about a logical name space. For this reason, all the illogical losers who couldn't handle his rules colonised the .com domain, which was/is run on a pure "cash for crap" basis. I wish he ran the entire Internet!
He could have sold out ages ago for heaps of cash, but hasn't. He is confounding the "greed is good" people. I think it's a hoot!
But I don't expect it to last. In times like these the politicians (bless their black wizened hearts) will find some way to take .au off him. Then the last defender of sanity will be gone, and the .au part of the Internet can be pillaged, just like the rest of it.
Yes, I realise, and most of the subdomains (with the exception of dropbear, which is kewl) are pretty lame. But that's where people not fitting in to the other .au namespaces are expected to go.
I'm not saying it's right, or elegant, or groovy, but that's how it's supposed to work.
That, or go get yourself a cheap com, net or org.
As someone else pointed out, assuming you live in Australia, you qualify for a free id.au domain.
.au namespace.
It may not be particularly sexy, but that's where you fit in to the
...j
If it was just VA employees perhaps, but it's the VA DNS guy. I think when the VA DNS guy is listed as a DNS contact for a domain, you can pretty reasonably assume it's a VA domain.
And in this particular case, it is owned by VA. "Propaganda" is Bowie J. Poag's project, formerly hosted by VA. He moved the project after strong disagreements with them, but they still retain control of everything else that was in Propaganda's name, like that domain.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Try "sextuple-u" -- it's easy to pronounce.
Heh. I remember when Slashdot was unreachable if prefixed with www.
slashdot.org is 12 characters. www. brings it to 16. 64.28.67.150 is 12 characters. Which is easier to remember, Slashdot.org or 64.28.67.150?
And hell, I find slashdot.org a lot easier to type than 64.28.67.150.
While I agree with the basic policies, I really do not like the guy at all. Strikes me as a one of those old sniveling monarchs who would cut peoples heads off if they brought him bad news or looked at him the wrong way. I certainly agree that he should have the authority taken off him because he is not worthy of it.
Life is complete only for brief intervals in between toys or projects -- John Dalton
Well I've read articles for and against Mr Elz. What I can say is that the Internet untill faily recently in Australia, was firmly controlled by the universities. I remember applying for a .au domain name about 6 years ago - I don't know if it was Mr Elz that I spoke to, but some guy whom I was told handled all .au registrations at the time said (after 3 months trying to track him down) "I'm not going to give your company a domain name as we believe the Internet is for academics and research not for commercial use, so I will never approve your application."!!!
:-)
This attitude realy sucked and definitely held back Australia's entry into the commercial domain on the internet, ultimately hurting the development of that type of business here.
On a side issue I notice the govt has decided to ban internet gambling here - except horse races (as they have a mechanism for taxing that). The funny thing was many pokies machines use the internet for monitoring them and the wording of the draft legislation would then ban most pokies machines in Oz which via tax are a big revenue earner for the govt!!! The Prime Minister was heard to quickly assure the gambling industry (non internet!) that the draft would be ammended! He said something about "unforseen loophole" - only he meant they *wanted* a loophole and had not forseen to add it.
my 2 cents worth
pithy comment
I don't know Robert personally, but I have met him at a couple of lunches for netbsd types. He's just a nice guy with a grey beard. Chris Disspain must have annoyed him somehow.
I am on the auDA DNS Competition panel, and realistically, it is time for Robert to give it over. It's just that he doesn't recognise auDA's authority. auDA has been inclusive. Each of the panels have 30 people on them from all walks of life, including those who represent - in my opinion - fringe interests. It's been a very interesting experience.
The Competition and Name panels have taken public comments, and the Competition panel has a meeting tomorrow to revise our final report based upon the submissions received. That's a public process done right.
As for privacy and anti-squatting, we are more strongly in favor of privacy and stricter on anti-squatting than the current rules, so the fears of delivering this stuff to the hands of big business are unfounded. WHOIS data will be severerly truncated to remove the ability to farm it for e-mail addresses, and includes strict agreements to prevent harvesting by registries or registrars. The consumer protection is going to be even stronger, based upon public input (and our own feelings on the matter as DNS consumers). We are also imposing minimum technical standards on the proposed single registry to make it extremely available, unlike munnari, which is just a Sun workstation running dns, ftp and whatever other jobs kre feels like running up.
auDA's inclusiveness and openness is a valid a reason as any for their legitimacy to obtain .au. In my opinion, it's time for the Internet to grow up in Australia.
Andrew van der Stock
When Internet Names Australia took control of the .com.au domain, that time shrank to 24 hours (premium service) or a couple of days (standard service).
Now, Elz only controls the .org.au domain and surprise surprise, you have to wait at least 3 months to get a .org.au domain.
Meanwhile, all us Aussies who would like personal domain names or would like to register a domain name for our local organistation or club are forced to sit around and twiddle our thumbs waiting for Elz to get off his arse and do something about our request. Either that, or go for a .com or .org.
Elz is your typical academic - disconected from the real world. He is well past his use-by date and the sooner he is replaced by an organistation whose task it is to handle domain name requests the better.
For the record and to his credit, Elz has been handling the .org.au requests by himself as a 'second job'. I believe he isn't paid directly by the University of Melbourne for this work and for this I salute him. However, he should have voluntarily given up control of the .au domain names a long time ago.
Previously Elz handled all .au domain names and it took around 9 months (yes nine months) to get a domain name. Then Melbourne IT took over and the wait time dropped to 24 hours (premium service) or a couple of days (standard service).
Meanwhile, Elz still looks after the .org.au service and you can still expect months of delays before you get (if you get) allocated a .org.au.
So frankly, while Elz admirably served a purpose at the start, he is well past his use-by date and the sooner he is ditched (since he doesn't seem to want to go voluntarily) the better for the Australian IT industry.
That said, I still think it's easier to remember slashdot.org than an IP address, and as someone has already pointed out, IPv6 nullifies the argument.
--
Gee, it's funny how the domain system12.* doesn't have a hint of VA ownership. In fact is registered to "Propaganda", Dean Henrichsmeyer.
Perhaps you should take your beef up with him instead of publicly insulting VA.
Are you still recovering from dealing with that fscking submit program? I know I am. . .
Your fellow honours student, in case you've forgotten . . .
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
Even within the Melbourne University CS department where he works (as a sysadmin, not an academic) he's legendary for his reclusiveness and the fear he strikes into academics afraid of losing their disk quota . . .
I only ever met him once - to ask him about monitoring the departmental network for faults. He's actually quite friendly and answered my dumb questions with a good deal of patience, once I had spent a week tracking him down. However, I have no doubt that he is impossible for non-technical people to deal with, because he appears to have had the part of the brain that deals with political matters removed at birth. He just doesn't care.
Go you big red fire engine!
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
you forgot one thing.... as a US citizen, I will proudly announce that any Auzzie football player can basically crush our best NFL stars in about 5-10 seconds. The winmpy girly-men we have in the NFL couldn't last 10 minutes playing Auzzie rules football.
I reccomend that every american should spend 1 week in Sydney or even do what I did and tour a very little (the tourist part) of the outback. It makes you realize that Oz is a very different place, both in people and life.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Your pitiful attempts at humanization have only begun in the last 40 years or so - whereas other parts of the world have gotten over it and started getting along 100's of years ago - in the case of Australia, helping ones mates was the only way to survive *yourself* for hundreds of years.
Hundreds of years? Talking about the Australian Aboriginies I take it... Seeing Asutralia had its 100th birthday (since Federation) just this year...
What's stopping you from getting a .nu, .cx, or any of the other country-turned-personal domains?
So if I walk down to my local Ministry of Fair Trading, register a business name of "Cars", I should be entitled to cars.com.au? Under the current rules this is prohibited. However some slip through such as news.com.au.
I guess another example on the converse as to why the rules need some work: There is a geographic rule that says that you can not register a .com.au that is the name of a place. This is enforced by using the postcode list of suburbs.
Domains like sydney.com.au are already registered because they were applied for before the rule was implemented. So many of the "premium" place names this rule is designed to protect are already gone.
However, Perth Airport can not register perthairport.com.au. Why? Because they have their own suburb called "Perth Airport". Arguably they should be allowed to use this domain.
Whether or not News Corp deserves news.com.au is up for debate but as it stands the rules are inconsistently applied and need review.
Another rule with potentially problematic side-effects is the derivation rule, where you can use an abbreviation of your official name for a domain, which means any subset of letters in your name can be used as long as they are in order. However a company called "Harry's Parrot Seed Exporters" could register hotsex.com.au. This is against the spirit of the derivation rule, but on the flip side the Salvation Army can not register "salvos.com.au" because it is not a derivative of the letters in their full name.
Both apple.com.au and orange.com.au would probably fail under Section 3.8 of the com.au allocation rules. Orange also fails Section 3.7 because it is the name of a place.
I believe apple.com.au was registered before these rules came into effect (it was registered in 1995 or earlier).
auDA was not set up by the politician that created Australia's Internet censorship laws. It was setup by the Australian Internet community. It is a non-profit industry association, not a government department. All of our members are people who are interested in the .au domain, and we are all working toward moving .au forward.
auDA does however work with the government to ensure they are happy with what we are doing. Under the Telecommunications Act in Australia which governs the DNS in Australia, the government can forcefully take control of running .au, which would not be ideal. I would rather have an Internet respresentative group running .au than the government. Therefore it is essential that auDA liaise with the government to ensure there are satisfied that they don't need
to invoke this power.
This is the culmination of over five years of ongoing dialogue within the Internet industry. It has the support of all the organisations that run 2LDs under .au (.com.au, .net.au etc.), the Australian government, and most stakeholders.
To suggest "there is nothing wrong with .au so why change" is not true. Firstly, one of the most important things that auDA wants to introduce but can't is competition. The domains in Australia are currently held by monopolies in much the same way Network Solutions held for top level domains until a few years ago. auDA seeks control so it can introduce competition and lower prices for .au domains.
auDA also seeks to be able to introduce new policies for domain eligibility. Whilst the rules have served well, there are changes to be made, loopholes to be closed. One example, currently generic domain names are banned (i.e. cars.com.au) yet many get through (news.com.au) which many people want addressed.
Also, service levels need to be implemented. One bugbear with the Australian Internet community is the level of service for ".org.au" domains. These are administered by Robert Elz himself. It can take months for applications to be accepted or rejected, or for updates to be made. Sometimes you may never receive a response at all - your request remaining in permanent limbo.
Finally, auDA maintains an ongoing dialogue with Robert Elz and to suggest otherwise is wrong. In fact, last year he signed another 2LD he was responsible for - com.au - over to auDA. auDA's approach to ICANN/IANA is just part of the procedure to move forward.
--
I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations
And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.
Berke Breathed
DNS runs on UNIX.
University hackers run UNIX.
Therefore, your conclusion that DNS has to be run by the university hacker in the back is a logical one.
--
Leonid S. Knyshov
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Nah. Common sense died around the same time that Vanilla Ice got popular.
Bowie J. Poag
Dean Henrichsmeyer = "Beret", the DNS guy at VA, dumb-ass. The other contacts listed are also VA employees. Hell, even the DNS servers point to OctobrX's (Trae McCombs, another VA employee) machine. Perhaps you should go back and get a Blue's Clue before defending VA when it comes to squatting.
Bowie J. Poag
You're welcome.
Bowie J. Poag
It's not just individuals that are squatting on domains. I happen to agree with the guy, but for different reasons--Companies themselves are also engadged in squatting. Hell, our very own beloved VA Linux Systems is still squatting on system12.com/net/org, and has steadfastly refused to relinquish control over it. To make matters worse, they've still got some hokey BS explanation up on propaganda.themes.org that makes people think my project dried up and blew away--Rather than redirect traffic to where they can easilly obtain them freely, they blackhole it into their own now-dead site.
The squatting issue goes both ways. Its rather hypocritical when Company X accuses someone of squatting on a domain they want when they're doing the same crap themselves.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Fuck free speech! Fuck the little guy! Fuck the individual! WIPO, ICANN, and the army of lawyers won't stop until they have closed-off every avenue of free speech on this planet. The DNS is 10% technical and 90% political.
You register a .id.au for individual use.
.conf.au for conferences (like the recent linux.conf.au) and a few other 2LD's, all noted at www.aunic.net.
.com was the US one. It's been one of the big debating points of Australian internet access why the hell they went with the US naming convention rather than the UK one, but it probably had something to do with MCI bending Telstra over a barrel which is why we have to subsidise lamerican's practically free internet access.
There's also
.co was the uk/european naming convention,
--
Matt
Matt
there's nothing wrong with the current system
.au domain. The au domain has strict rules that don't leave any room for private individuals to register a domain. These rules are, as far as I can tell:
.au until seven or eight years ago, and individuals cannot register domains in .au even now.
That is patently false. If you are a private individual in Australia, you cannot get a domain name in the
gov.au: Government organisations only.
com.au: Registered businesses only.
net.au: Similar to com.au, but probably reserved for internet providers
org.au: registered nonprofit organisations only.
Nowhere is there room for the private individual who wants a domain name for their own computer.
Mr. Elz has without a doubt had a beneficial effect on the au domain, as is amply illustrated by the near absence of cybersquatting. However, he is only one individual, and can be subject to shortsightedness and personal prejudice. Two examples: businesses could not register domains in
--
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing. - Edmund Burke
are there no regional .au names?
.com.au to registered companies, .org.au to registered organisations, etc.. is a great idea, but something should be left over for other people.
Limiting
They do.
.id.au
Anyone can have one.
That's stupid then. I stand corrected. I bow my head in shame.
having a .com.au implies you are an australian company, to the erst of the world. Isn't it somewhat misleading if you aren't? Is it wrong to insist that they check to see, in fact, that you ARE a company? This is one problem with .com... they never verified anything.
.net.au implies you are a network provider by definition. Why should you have a .net.au if you aren't?
.gov is only for government, or .edu for educational...
.au has .id.au for individuals.
Having a
Nobody argues
And as others pointed out,
You aussies should be *happy* your domain name system hasn't been cast to the wolves. It's one of the few run the way it should be.
Not to denigrate his efforts ... it's just that some business entities prefer a less risky (from their point of view ... I'm not claiming it is any more or less valid) process than relying on an individual (single point of failure). Historically this was illustrated by Postel's untimely passing away which some would say let some undeserving groups seize control of the Internet domain names in the transition. Similarly markets get very nervous about companies which don't have a successor policy for their key executives. While OSS projects do benefit from benevolent dictators, even entire city-states (e.g. Lee clan in Singapore), in general it is hard to guarentee a consistent level of performance across long-timer period or even multiple generations (cough*US presidency*cough). However, in this case, given the relatively small size of Australia, I would find it hard to see where a committee/board/bureau would have any significant advantages over a single technically competent individual (apart from having some way of accessing their memories for prosterity). In some ways, a compromise might be to offer to fund an apprentice (padawan?) to help document his policies for greater transparency and generally record the historical underpinnings.
LL
there is only .gov.au for Goverment activities in Australia (State and Federal). Defence (our DoD) uses the defence.gov.au domain. We do not have a .mil.au domain (at this time...)
Onya Robert E.!!!
dt..
"Never underestimate the power of very stupid people in large groups" seen on someone's blog...
www.mchappyday.com.au (or similar?)
www.burgermeister.com.au
www.pearlharbor.com.au
The first two are both McDonalds sites (I can't remember the proper name of the first one, briefly saw it on a cup) and the second is a site for a movie.
It seems anyone with enough money can get around the .au "restrictions". [sigh]
One thing that pisses me off is that supposedly you're only allowed one domain name per registered company, and yet i've seen shit like this:
.au "restrictions". [sigh]
:)
www.mchappyday.com.au (or similar?)
www.burgermeister.com.au
www.pearlharbor.com.au
The first two are both McDonalds sites (I can't remember the proper name of the first one, briefly saw it on a cup) and the second is a site for a movie.
It seems anyone with enough money can get around the
All you have to do is register, e.g. McHappyDay Networks as a business name at your local registrar, paying a fee which varies from state to state (here in SA it's $105 for 2 years, I think) and then apply for the domain name using that company name as the company setting up the site. Of course, if you're doing this with the full approval and at the request of McDonald's, you won't get sued
deus does not exist but if he does
What's a "USian"?
This page accidentally left blank
Yes, I realise, and most of the subdomains (with the exception of dropbear, which is kewl) are pretty lame. But that's where people not fitting in to the other .au namespaces are expected to go.
The question cannot be answered without knowing what the persons/organisations/entities are.
Mauritius (MU) domain is being sold via http://www.mu (or https://www.mu for Mauritian based IP) this is without goverment authorisation. Worst the root dns is not based in the island and hence how can u trust the resolving of ***.MU in any case ?
.la domain is probably even worst...
Nor is this the only example. The situation with the
Brilliant! Even if allegedly French. Also has the advantage of not reminding you of an american president. Three times. No, waffwaffwaff is the way to go. Here doggie! Good boy!
I asked
He said in part
I would guess that if you don't get a reply then your request is declined.
the major problem with arguing with someone like Robert Elz is that he's right. His decisions are ethically just, logically sound and save everyone having to consult a lawyer.
You know that you're wrong when you're arguing with Robert Elz
Regards Sinesurfer A Nerd is someone who lives for technology, A Geek is someone who lives for technology and loves it
.id.au IIRC?
a benevolent dictator beats a corrupt democracy any day.
Industries expecting to make a buck from the Internet (even if their representative organisation doesn't) shouldn't be the only players to have control over the .au namespace.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
It's been interesting to read a variety of responses to this issue from Australians, perhaps reflecting some more general social opinions.
:)
Mr. Elz may be helped by a tendency in Australia (as in other British-dominated areas) to have a greater acceptance of an "orderly benevolent dictatorship" within which some rights are provided based upon good reason, but may not be strictly guaranteed - as long as things work within reason.
On the other hand, simultaneously there is a mistrust of the same kind of system. Social engineering efforts from England invited abuse and the "toadie prefect" sort of situation. Government bureaucracy won't be trusted/appreciated when authority is applied capriciously by a pointy-headed control-minded individual.
Mr. Elz is in the middle. He doesn't work for the government, but he is governing matters of some importance. Is he a benevolent dictator providing order? Or a pointy-headed control freak acting by whim? Depends who is answering...
I don't know much about Mr. Elz, but I feel that concentrating the actual decision-making of an entire nation on DNS issues in the hands of a single individual (at least without any review) may be unwise, as capricious behavior could not really be verified or prevented. OTOH he built something carefully which ought not be destroyed, and it seems crude to sieze it from him. Perhaps Australia should have another top level domain - not really fair though...
Your analogy is flawed, for multiple reasons: Linus HAS given up control, or more accurately, Linux is uncontrolable. Anyone can do anything they like to Linux. Second, Linux is not a limited resource. You can copy it and change it, or put in on a disc and burn it. Third, Australia's domain system is part of a larger hierarchy and system which NO ONE should have the right to control. He is the caretaker of a part of the system already cordoned off by artificial government boundries. If it wasn't for the australian government, there would be no .au domain. And if it wasn't for whoever created the domain name system, there would be no .au. He did not build this think all by his lonesome.
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
They've probably got Robert Elz propped up somewhere with a pair of dark sunglasses on. Maybe they took his phone off the hook and glued the handset to his ear and mouth.
And after that we can go along with that smartcards plan.. and oh yea, I no longer wish to be referred to as Shadowcaster. Instead, refer to me by my tracking muber 2837429378465-gxq-215
the best place i've found is register buzz. $10/year/domain. sweet.
Intoducing artificial competition for it's own sake is ludicrous
.org.au is staggeringly inefficient, and costs for other domains are too high.
.com.au domains are only useful so long as the rules for business names are the same. It's the same idea that if I get a passport in someone else's name I'm going to have no trouble getting a fake library card too.
So it is. In this case it is necessary because the administration of
News corporation is the name of the company
I can walk into an office of the Australian Securities Commission and hand over a form registering my business as "Cars Pty. Ltd." - now what is wrong with me having cars.com.au? The rules for
I don't think you understand the issues at all. The thing about Australia is, it's a foreign country - don't try to map your knowledge of how things are done in the US. While it works sometimes, it's risky.
Elz is, and always was, a bureaucrat, and never a very efficient one. Yes, he prevented companies from buying up "toothpaste.com.au" (unless of course they could produce a certificate of business registration for Toothpaste Pty. Ltd. - hardly a serious obstacle!) but he also held back Australian business for years. Getting a domain from Elz meant jumping through his arbitrary hoops and then waiting MONTHS for processing. For why? To satisfy one man's ideas about what a revolution that no one man was supposed to own or control.
While we saw a lot of useless or even counter-productive "e-businesses" in Silicon Valley, it is only relatively recently that it has been possible to do something as simple as going to buy "commodity" from "commodity".com.au.
I'm the consumer. I want a service - if I have to use a search engine to send flowers to my Grandmother, or to find a place to buy a network card, what the fuck do I care about Elz' sense of fair play? It does Australia no good (nor the internet as a global entity) if the easiest choice for me to make is to go to pricewatch and from there to some US site that is happy to ship.
The ORBS RBL has Robert Elz blacklisted because they're filtered away from his nets. (He doesn't like them trying to relay mail through his mailer.)
I suspect that auDA is an ORBS subscriber and just aren't getting his mail as a result.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Well, I don't know. Back when we got our .com.au domain (about a year before Melbourne IT) it was the ISP that took ages and got things wrong. The people who wanted to charge $200 to fill in the AUNIC form (I can do that myself, thank you).
Both the domain registration and the subsequent change of delegation were done promptly and correctly.
So - where do people get the stories of months long registration? Were we lucky? Did ISPs stuff around and fail to pass stuff onto Robert Elz? Is it that we had our end in order? (We are a real business.)
Anyone have a first-hand account?
-- Hi! I'm the "Good Times" signature virus. Copy me into your Sig!
another globalist coterie dedicated to one-world politics rather than the genuine welfare of those it is supposed to represent
Is the opposite of "one-world politics" "one-nation politics"? Or maybe "one-person politics"?
The buzzword alarm just went off when I read your post (global.* -> loud klaxon).
Rob
I'm with you on that one... I can't believe people are responding to this like it's a real post!
---- It puts the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again. It does this whenever it's told.
If it's censored at all corners, then how are there free PR0N sites and why can I log on and see a movie of an actual murder. I'm not trying to be gross and perverse, but some ppl will always be putting unfiltered, uncensored stuff up on the net. Some agencies are just making it harder to find.
"The best laid plans of mice and men gang oft agley..." - ROBERT BURNS
No domain for you!
Well, since everyone that reads slashdot seems to be so well-*cough*-informed, maybe the solution is to have every application for a *.au domain be a slashdot poll.
What domain should Sue's 'Roo Stew In a Shoe Company have?
( ) suesroostewinashoe.com.au
( ) pocketlunch.com.au
( ) savetheroos.org.au
( ) cmdrtacosinthecan.net.au
Democracy at work!
Give me my freedom, and I'll take care of my own security, thank you.
Actually, I applied for a .org.au about 3 months ago, it was approved in 7 days.
.org.au/.edu.au domain stuffs take about 2 to 8 weeks.
.org.au, moreso if you are incorporated, then I've never had a problem - although he did reject fuct.org.au, the Free Unix (Users) Consortium (of) Tasmania ;-)
You fill out the form correctly with the information they want, it gets a pretty decent turn-around. Although I was somewhat shocked by the speed, average
Honestly, the service/domains are free (yes, that's costed nothing), I am quite content to wait around a bit for a deal like that.
The rules that apply, if your group more or less fits the conditions for getting a
Other then the fact that I actually read an article like this in the Melbourne Age on the day of the Telstra 3GB cap announcement, this has been taken slightly out of context, somewhat.
--- acb!irc.slashnet.org
This thread has good and bad things to say about Mr. Elz, with most of the bad from people who do not want to do it Mr. Elz's way. I see no sympathy for the Australian government, which is friend to nobody but themselves in my not so humble opinion.
And let us be .oz (again)
but by 1965, the idea of a domain name had become a commodity
Umm, 1965?
www.slashdot.org, (31 characters) or 64.28.67.150 (10 characters).
I count 8 significant characters, or 11 if you include the "org". More importantly it parses into two words (slash-dot), which is how the human memory works (we don't store strings of characters -- witness the miserable spelling on this site). AND those two words are somewhat related to the content of the site (brain already had some connections from "geeky stuff" to "slash dot"). Compared to 10 numbers (and there are actually only 9 in that IP address anyway, but a max of 12) 2 words are WAY easier to remember.
And it gets even MORE fun with IPv6...
Interesting to see if ICANN have any right to stop him... of course, he who controls . controls it all, but lets see.
~~~~~ BigLig2? You mean there's another one of me?
No wonder redelegations take so long! :)
:)
For those who haven't experienced it, a lot of the au (except com.au) administration (registration, redelgations etc.) is done at a snails pace because it has to go through this one guy. If you thought NSI was bad...
later
marty
"I can't buy want I want because it's free. Can't be what they want because I'm me." -Corduroy, Pearl Jam
maybe he just hasn't got around to checking his email?
I find it amazing that Mr. Elz has been able to so successfully regulate the prized .com.au domain hierarchy.
He *meant* business, I'm sure. You need to be a registered business, not a company. Or else the businesses I've registered are not looking too good.
Better to stay silent, and let people think you're an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt
Are you sure about that? I made a web site for a company that has one registered COMPANY name, but has just changed the BUSINESS name, thus still owns both, and has both domain names for the BUSINESS.
Better to stay silent, and let people think you're an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt
While it may be true that cybersquatting isn't a problem in this country, it's often been noted by Australians that it's too hard to get a domain here. The commercial community is new enough that the '.com' hegemony is really rife. '.com.au' is a long enough extension to a domain. Not many people use '.net.au' or '.org.au' because it's just too obscure.
It's not just money here, you actually have to have a company registered with that name. It's not so bad for this country, but if everyone else did this now, the Internet wouldn't be what it is, but controlled almost solely by corporate commercial interests.
In isolation, there's never been much of an alternative offered in Australia. So people like us that don't want to register companies are polluting the top level domain space.
Sorry if this sounds like it's not going anywhere, but what I'm pointing to is that it's driving us to further exploit the top level domain. It's not good that the US has such a stranglehold on it. The namesystem needs to be freed up. The policies here are too restrictive for Free Speech, no matter how much lawyers hate them.
toeslikefingers.com - because
phenomenal troll my friend...no-one seems to have got it even with the intentional mistakes.
nice work
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
Right arm, brother! But I have to say, your view of Americans seems to have been colored by an indiscriminate viewing of Kojak reruns, Bruce Willis movies and the WWF. Those are playground attitudes.
illegitimii non ingravare
I have domain names of my own, and I've registered a domain for my boss -- Even though I did it through a work machine they were our Private domains, paid for with our money. If somebody tried to confuse my personal domain and the stuff I did with it and the work of my company, I would have told them to go get a brain.
Now, I'm not saying that VA does NOT control system12. I'm just saying that the guilt by association thing doesn't quite cut it as proof for me.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
Just think about that statement for a minute.
Costs for other domains are too high.
Those two items may very well be interelated.
Insanity is the last line of defence for the master diplomat. But you have to lay the groundwork early.
Australia needs a non political group controlling the DNS. Perhaps that group should also be the regulating authority for Australia's portion of the Internet.
Although, it would be a better idea for the whole world to be under one Internet Authority, but that is an idealistic situation.
In any case, the Oz government has made so many screw ups in regards to the Internet that handing them the DNS will possibly just make Australia fall back even further, in a technological sense.
The military use .gov.au
Cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
I'm Australian and I own a commercial website that uses a .com instead of a .com.au because the .com.au was too hard to get .com.au credible is very important in Australia. The US has nothing similar. .com.au will become worthless.
Robert Elz is well known here and I think that he is just great. Keeping
Here in Australia the government is made up of technophobes and economic rationalists. The Prime Minister would sell his wife to Armenia for landfill if he could get a good price.
Robert Elz is our last bulwark against Senator Alston and his kind. If Mr Elz ever gives in (or is broken) then the
We have seen bizarre and unenforceable internet laws introduced left and right over here. Mr Elz is the only person left with both profile and credibility.
The situation looks strange from overseas but here it is very important.
Cuiusvis hominis est errare; nullius nisi insipientis in errore perseverare.
In terms of .au, yes I think he is. The
truth is, there isn't all that much to do.
The problems people are having with .org.au were mirrored a few years ago with .com.au registrations - it took several weeks to register a new domain. At this time Robert solved the problem by appointing Melbourne IT as the registrar for com.au. They cleared the huge backlog in about a month and then brought the cycle time down to 3 days.
So the problems with .org.au could be fixed as easily, and it doesn't require Robert to give up ownership of .au.
The question of new 2LDs under .au is a tricky one - Robert refuses (or ignores, which is the same thing) all requests for new 2LDs. Is this "handling things well"? I don't know, but given the ridiculous TLDs which have been approved (.museum, for xenu's sake! Why don't these fuckers fit under .org?) maybe being as tight as a fish's asshole on new 2LDs is exactly what's required.
Nick.
I got email from him a couple of days ago. Answering my questions, no less. It was definitely kre, not some impersonator.
It should also be pointed out that Robert Elz was one of the first to connect Australia to the Internet, that's WHY he's in charge of
Here's one of his famous usenet postings about the DNS:
Hello,
.au domain. No one in the article seems to accuse him doing a bad, poor, or otherwise biased job; in fact, the article seems to indicate he is handling things well.
I read the article on the Sydney Morning Herald's web site, and came away more confused than anything else.
The quotation from Peter Coroneos (which I am assuming is the hotly-debated part) is truncated, which makes it rather hard to determine what he means. Is there a complete transcript of his interview? That would hopefully make things clearer.
Also, I'm curious as to why Australia's National Office of the Information Ecomony wants Robert Elz to relinquish stewardship of the
On an demi-related subject, it doesn't appear this is even a new subject. A quick search of the Internet found an article dated November, 1998 at the Law Office of Phillips Fox discussing this very issue.
Perhaps someone who is an involved party could provide more information.
Regards,
Aryeh Goretsky
- - -
Dexter is a good dog.
You can find his office phone number from the web, but if you try calling it during the day, a friendly secretary will tell you he isn't working right now. However, if you call at 4am, the odds he'll answer are pretty good. Makes it difficult to find out what's going on when he ignores .org.au registration requests for 9 months...
This (while being a cool idea) doesn't really do what I want it to do. First of all I haven't ever seen an ISP offering me one of these. Once registered can I get it hosted overseas? It's way to restrictive for many uses...
But thanks for pointing it out (everyone who did)
Zilch
Also, I think the fact that there are only 9 of them speaks volumes.
Zilch.
There *are* no options here. It's way restrictive. .id.au now please?
Can people stop suggestion
Zilch.
And another thing that pisses me off...
.oz.au? How do I get one?
.oz.au?
Take a look at this guys email address!
What the hell is
Is this guy camping on all of
Talk about "cybersquatting"!
Can someone tell me what the deal is here?
Zilch.
Nothing AFAIK. Hmm...maybe that's why I have a .gen.nz one (!)
Zilch
Please gop back and re-read the thread.
Zilch
Well thanks for clearing that up for me.
(!)
Zilch
Shouldn't that be www.aunic.net.au ??
.oz.au either...)
(Doesn't seem to mention
Zilch
So he's the reason that I can't register a domain name! Yes folks, time to move on. The Australian rules may reduce cybersquatting, but they are brain-dead. Check this out:
.com.au domain if you are a registered company.
.org.au domain if you are a registered organisation.
.net.au domain if you are a registered ISP
.gov.au if you are a government department
.com domain . Thank god I kept my .gen.nz domain.
.co.au, not .com.au. Since when did "com" become the abbreviation for company?
- You can register a
- You can register a
- You can register a
- You can register a
- (I'm sure there is a military one as well)
Guess which ones's I'm not? This is crazy! How are you suppost to register a domain for personal use? Their solution is to register a
Also, it should be
Zilch.
After all, the guy isn't answering anybody's questions, 1984-2001 is a long time (at least 170 Internet years) and the ones currently selling namespaces in the .au domain are the Melbourne University ...
<CONSPIRACY_THEORY>Maybe the guy died and the Melbourne University has covered it up to keep selling .au domains</CONSPIRACY_THEORY>
Start digging up the Univerity's Campus, there must be a corpse in there somewhere ...
so you're getting a 4ld, not a 3ld.
Once again teaching us that taken out of context, ANY quote can sound really really bad. So if you are, or even if you aren't being quoted, watch what you say folks, because you TOO could be misinterpreted some day, and then where would you be? Hopefully not Australia.
.
Jake
Dating: while( 1 ){ call_girl(); get_rejected(); drink_40(); } return 0;
Linus controls Linux - the word anyway. Anyone can do anything with the code, but if Linus says not to use the name Linux, then you're fscked.
ok so........ Whats the problem???Wasn't the .com.au domain INTENDED for companies??
If he isn't handing out ANY domains, thats a problem. I don't see a reason to complain though if you don't get your www.whatever.com.au domain. its not like there aren't other and BETTER options than .com. It happens to be the most popular but, for a personal site, why not use what he has offered for personal domains??? Do you have a thing for .com??? Don't complain about the guy because you don't like the rules. There have to be some rules, these seam to make more sence than alot.; Just imagine what the govt. will do if they get ahold of the domain. That will be cause for alarm!!
.com stands for, or was intended to, commercial. which has been abreviated com for several decades.
Why don't they just assasinate him and take the computers like any other self-respecting government?
Sure, you might think that zilch.net.au is cooler, but we're talking a globally accessible namespace here.. cluttering it with vanity names seems kinda silly...
Anyways, go to www.id.au and check out your options.
More likely he has been sent many responses back, but the content filters have been deleting his messages :-)
The amount of info you can store in short term memory is 7 +/- 2 "chunks" (those are really the units the psychologists use), whree a "chunk" is (roughly speaking) an atomic unit of information. So, 42 stored as two digits ("four-two") is two chunks, but stored as a single quantity ("forty-two") is a single chunk.
I agree with the France bit... although I find the dot eff air bit more interesting - sounds a hell of a lot better than dot kom or dot kom dot hey you
*** I am the real stylewagon
Wow. There really are people out there from the days when the net was run by interested, concerned people who aimed to do a good job rather than bend over for the corporate bum's rush.
And suprise, suprise, the Austrailian government can't stand that. Now who'd have thought that of the government eh? :)
Typically, when they find out they can't steal his authroity legally, the government goes to ICANN, another globalist coterie dedicated to one-world politics rather than the genuine welfare of those it is supposed to represent.
Hmmm, I wonder what ICANN will decide? Let me think...
Basically, the government want their slice of the cash cow that USian corporate greed has started, and they are being frustrated by a man who is a true hero of the people. If only more people had stood up to the government, maybe we wouldn't have such a shitty situation today, with unaccountable bodies like ICANN finding for their corporate pals each and every time.
Jon Erikson, IT guru
For me, this guy is a guardian of the original Internet spirit.... I say: he should keep the .au domain, instead of some government agency or a commerical entity.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
It is dangerous to lump 284 million US citizens together with the attitude of some apelike football player.
Traditional US values have been similar; support for the underdog and a dislike of arrogant Europe. The is why we have the laws we have today.
But the garbage in a river floats to the top, and our media and government are run by people with large egos and small brains. And almost all sports players are idiots the world over.
I am seening before my eye the making of Saint Elz of the Internet
I know nothing of Mr Elz personally, nor of the arguement (if there is one) with auDomain Authority, but one thing I know:
MelbourneIT, which was formed with his blessing, is a great supporter of ICANN (they have a share in the new .biz tld).
They also happen to be the dfacto authority for the .au domain. AFAIK, the government's new body (auDomain Authority) will take that authoity from Melbournet IT, which they claim will lead to more competition in this namespace.
To me, it appears that whoever is controlling the .au tld has almost no bearing on whether I can register a name with them or or the cost involved (up to three times the .com tld costs)
Just my two cents!
Sasha
It's been replaced with the Red Green version -- "If it ain't broke, you're not trying!"
This next song is very sad. Please clap along. -- Robin Zander
Why? Whats easist to type? www.slashdot.org, (31 characters) or 64.28.67.150 (10 characters). Can't people remember these things unless they spell out words?
However, the main problem is that virtually all of the world's domains are handled by unelected, unaccountable organisations. This need s to be stopped. Government control is essential for the stability of the web. How would you feel if Microsoft bought control of the internet? Its possible.
Ummm.. why would "The industry" want a .org.au domain? Shouldn't they stick to .com.au?
"There is almost no litigation in that area
Oh, just peachy, there's nothing wrong with the current system other than the fact that they don't control it, so they want to come along and mess with it.
I though the saying If it isn't broken, don't bugger about with it still held?
A-ha! So that's why Hutchinson's couldn't get orange.com.au, but Apple could get apple.com.au (even though it's generic)?
The whole .au policies need to be reviewed, as they are so inconsistent and unfair. If you are who I think you are, good luck to you!
Please investigate the .id.au domain.
Just do a yahoo search and youll find robert elz is spread through heaps of newsgroups. Seems like he is a NETBSD user, and is pretty deep in all things to do with the internet plumbing. Seems pretty helpful too.
-- Cheer, Cheer, The Red and the White.
he's camping .au
--
0x00
I don't personally know the history of this case here... but if they say that because of this guy Australia has never had a cybersquatting problem.. that is just great!
I'v had more than a few personal encounters with cybersquatters in the past, up to a level that I'v had to handle the issue with WIPO.
Judging from the news I'v been hearing about Australian gov. attitude towards the Internet.. this would be 'the final nail to the coffin'..
To me it seems quite clear: Internet has lived past the age where "information can be truly free" what ever that means. Usually it has something to do with privacy and personal independence. I am really hoping that one of these p2p/alike new communication systems out there will re-establish parts of the original Internet spirit: let the people be independent and in control!
.km
Elz built .au; it's only right that he continue to control it. His silence speaks volumes:
By remaining silent, he grants no legitimacy to the land grab.By way of analogy, imagine a government deciding that it's just too dangerous for something as important as, say, Linux to remain under the control of a private individual, rather than a duly-appointed government contractor. Then imagine the sorts of quotes you'd see from the contractor:
Sounds ridiculous, right?Here's an idea: Let the government ask for a whole new domain, called .oz (but there's some folks in Kansas that might have their eyes on that one) that they can administer according to their whims, and leave well enough alone.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
Anyone know where the governing body sits on this issue?
--------
Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
There is also .asn.au which stands for "association", restrictions as follows:
* incorporated bodies
* political parties
* trade unions
* sporting and special interest clubs
* "partnerships" between disparate organisations.
(http://www.godomains.com.au/info/asn.au/)
BTW, there is a .AU.COM as well:
[quote]
An alternative to the .com.au name. These names do not carry the strict requirements of .com.au names
[/quote]
Heck, not just any old medal, how does an Order of Australia sound? Much better than a letter from IANA or whoever snatching .au from him.
While we're at it, dropbear.id.au is rather nice, and free as well as a subtle reminder of Australianess in me (uh-oh). While it's a bit long, it makes for quite nice accusations of being a traitor to .nz when I pass over my e-mail address... :)
Jonathan Ah Kit - Lower Hutt, New Zealand - jonathan@metalab.unc.edu
Doesn't one person controlling everything sound like a dictatorship? And another thing -- censorship is bad, mmkay?
The body of watchmen shouldn't need watching if it is set up properly in the first place. That is to say; their members are elected to the post and members can only stand for a fixed number of terms. Candidates should be drawn from the bodies being watched and more importantly any member of the public who cares to stand for election.
Finally, and most importantly, the body should be a none profit organization.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
It looks as if an article about evil commercial working with evil Government, together with evil politicans who support Internet censorship, against a single citizen, and most people would jump into conclusion that the person stands against them is hero, guardian of something.
.com.hk, .edu.hk, .net.hk, .org.hk allowed. We argued many policies are obviously ridiculous, say why must we append .com. to .hk for everything commercial? We could make it shorter and decent.
.com.hk, .net.hk, .org.hk.
I'd not comment on anybody in the case. I'd like to tell you a story on domain name registration in Hong Kong. (.hk)
The domian name registration was controlled by a University owned commercial sector. They were having their own regulations like one company one domain name, no personal application, and no domain other than
Later Government took over the domain registration business. We did't trust the Government at all, and expected the worst to come. However, they actually make major improvement in domain name registration like allowing one company apply for multiple domain names, personal domain name registration and soon we can apply for domain name other than
The key point is that their work is now accountable. No more dictatorship and there's communication channels accepting suggestions from all different interest parties, and they actually made improvement out of them - not perfect solutions but at least the process of suggestion to improvement is very open, and the outcome is balanced for most interest parties.
I think as long as the domain name registration process is open, fair and accountable it's fine for any one to run it.
a) A HATE of arrogance. Americans encourage the NFL type of attitude, your brought up on it "Im da man", "I am the greatest", "You can't play me" etc.
We in Australia really don't give a shit how good you think you are, coming across as one of us, a mate as such, is much more important. This means we draw a fine line between confidence and arrogance.
2) A desire to back the underdog (backing the "team" given the least chance to "win") and a attitude of general dislike to positions of authority. Basically, we really get the shits when corporations / big companies try to show their muscle on the little guy.
Note that Im not saying these traits are unique or consistent to just Australians but that are something we claim as part of our identity (well the white mans identity anyway ....)
So what has this got to do with the the story I hear you ask????
Well the government is in a pickle here. They can't just demand that Mr Elz hand over his control of the .au domains because that would cause a HUGE public backlash. It would violate both attitudes above.
In a news bulletin I just watched an hour ago, Pizza hut has just realised how dangerous it is to take patriotic type issues to the court (they are fighting against an Aussie pizza company). I'm sure the government is also fully aware of the implications of getting on the wrong side of the public (admittedly the media plays a big role here).
Mr Elz is considered somewhat of a hero for refusing to create the cyber squatting nightmares some countries have. Sure this has also made .au domain names difficult to obtain sometimes (i.e. you have to actually show you're a legit company, want to use the domain for good reasons - shock horror).
Don't bank on the addressing system changing for a while either, if for no other reason than the mess the government would create if it forced the issue (our elections are coming up this year). I for one don't mind Mr Elz controlling the country's system instead the "regulatory" bodies who have done so (*cough*) well overseas.
Now there are places that will register your .com, .net, or .org for $60/2 years, or even less. Competition has definitely helped. Why wouldn't it help in the *.au domains (as long as the namespace is properly regulated)?
Yes, but the .au.com domain is just a company selling subdomains at extortionate prices. They don't have the restrictions because they are simply selling subdomains of their own domain. Anyone can do it and they don't need to conform to any of the normal rules of ICANN (like dispute resolution, trademark and copyright issues etc). I prefer Robert Elz, he may be pedantic, he may be slow, but he does it for the love of it and has a passion for what he does. We need more people like him.
You call me a pedant? I prefer the term "correct"
Who watches the watchmen. You say that it should all be under one Authority. What about corruption? What about greed? What of the 'good old boy (or good new corp) system'? What is to counter these things?
-CrackElf
"Blake is an idealist, Jenna. He cannot afford to think." - Kerr Avon, Star One, Blakes 7
Mauritius (MU) domain is being sold via http://www.mu (or https://www.mu for Mauritian based IP) this is without goverment authorisation. Worst the root dns is not based in the island and hence how can u trust the resolving of ***.MU in any case ? I bet it is the same for AU Hansley
What am i, but stardust
It would be a very Bad Thing if the Australian gov't is able to wrest control of the domain away from Robert Elz because it would set a nasty precedence for future possible litigation. It basically would say that people with established RL organization names have an exclusive right to online domains that resemble those organization names. It would also place the administration of domain names in the hands of the government, setting the stage for a 100% gov't owned and operated internet.
...
string* plamenessFilter =
*plamenessFilter = "Flaming Death!!";
From the page you linked: "Registrations are not currently open for new domains directly under id.au. You must register in an existing subdomain of id.au." You must pick one of the existing subdomains. It looks like there are less than a dozen of those.
An attempt at using the concept of 'eminent domain', which is a common excuse for governmental entities to seize control of legitimately-held private property. Take a look at Jacob Hornberger's work with the Future of Freedom Foundation, and take a look at Harry Brown's (Libertarian candidate for US President, '96 and 2000) running mate's record of fighting eminent domain in California for good reasons why the concept is flawed, immoral, unjust, corrupt, and intellectually bankrupt (if you need reasons other than your own, that is)
think for yourself, you won't like the results if others do it for you.
Have a look at http://www.id.au/id-domains.html for more information.