Internet Domain Name Structure for .au

[Robert Elz]

    Date:        Thu, 5 Oct 1995 14:25:25 +1000
    From:        Simon Vandore <simon@magna.com.au>
    Message-ID:  <199510050425.OAA17357@magna.com.au>

    I've never registered a domain name, but aunic seems a helluva
    lot stricter than the US internic.

Yes.   For com.au named as opposed to .com names anyway.   Other
parts of the US namespace are quite strictly controlled.

    I don't understand why book names can't be domain names while
    magazine names can

Actually, these days, in general, none of those can.   I have
recently rejected attempts to register several magazine names.
The correct domain name is that of the publisher.  Of course,
occasionally the publisher & publication have the same name
(readers digest was recently registered as one example).   Domains
(in com.au) belong to organisations, not to products, services,
trade marks, or anything similar.  Further, one domain name is
sufficient for almost all organisations (sub-domains exist to
allow that to be divided among various sub-groups) - having a
whole organisation's domain names based upon one product, service,
or publication, etc, seems like it would be a very short sighted
policy.

    (click.com.au, hyper.com.au, pcuser.com.au, etc...

Until recently the rules (while always being basically the same)
were less strictly enforced, especially during the last part of
the first half of this year.   Unfortunately, quite a lot of names
were registered then which wouldn't be registered now (and in many
cases which wouldn't have been registered had they been requested a
year earlier).  However, once registered, and unless either
released, ordered unregistered by a court or something, or we
find some fraud or equivalent in the application, they stay
registered, I am not going to start taking away domains just because
we (I) didn't watch what was being registered closely enough.

kre