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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 .'"
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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
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...
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"
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.
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:
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 ...
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.
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.