Firstly, I am a board member of.au Domain Administration (auDA), speaking for myself.
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.
It's funny to read every few weeks about another stupid move from the Australian government. But at the end of the day, after years of stupid laws - what has changed?
Nothing.
The net is as free (as in speech) as it was 5 years ago. None of these laws have made any difference. Those that actually get off the drawing board go through so many committees and are so ludicrous they are easily circumvented.
Look at the Australian Internet censorship laws - in the first six months since they came into effect, how much porn has the government erradicated? All of it? Half? 1%? No, just 93 web pages!
That's like shooting a hundred cows in England and
declaring Foot and Mouth disease cured.
Come move to Western Australia.. our draconian net censorship laws came into effect years ago. Back then they hadn't thought of half the things that they have decided to ban in SA!
Actually, Australia came to be exactly 100
years ago today on January 1, 1901. Today is the
Centenary of Federation and they are having
celebrations all day.
I've never seen a guard at Floreat Beach guarding
a man hole. But that said I've never seen anyone
guarding any of Perth's telco infrastructure apart
from telco facilities or exchanges.
This is the not the first story extolling Open Source by the same Australian journalist in the same newspaper that has been cited by Slashdot. I only noticed because I know him, but how many other stories are being regurgitated in this fashion - and more to the point - why is there a continual tide of stories about them in Slashdot?
Perhaps Slashdot could create a sidebar devoted to keeping an eye out on OSS/Linux/whatever publicity and just list the latest URLs instead of making them stories...
sengan's intro says "The best quote is at the end...". That is just the end of the first page, if you click Next Page at the bottom of the article it carries on several more pages...
Slashdot Mirror
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 wish someone had told him this _before_ he released Mostly Harmless :-)
Are you really an Aussie? An Australian would know it is just Christmas Island.
Nothing.
The net is as free (as in speech) as it was 5 years ago. None of these laws have made any difference. Those that actually get off the drawing board go through so many committees and are so ludicrous they are easily circumvented.
Look at the Australian Internet censorship laws - in the first six months since they came into effect, how much porn has the government erradicated? All of it? Half? 1%? No, just 93 web pages! That's like shooting a hundred cows in England and declaring Foot and Mouth disease cured.
How can it be node 1,000,000 if it is also node 999,998 .. isn't that cheating?
Come move to Western Australia.. our draconian net censorship laws came into effect years ago. Back then they hadn't thought of half the things that they have decided to ban in SA!
Actually, Australia came to be exactly 100 years ago today on January 1, 1901. Today is the Centenary of Federation and they are having celebrations all day.
I've never seen a guard at Floreat Beach guarding a man hole. But that said I've never seen anyone guarding any of Perth's telco infrastructure apart from telco facilities or exchanges.
Sounds double-plus-good.
Perhaps Slashdot could create a sidebar devoted to keeping an eye out on OSS/Linux/whatever publicity and just list the latest URLs instead of making them stories...
sengan's intro says "The best quote is at the end...". That is just the end of the first page, if you click Next Page at the bottom of the article it carries on several more pages...