[LINK] Re: .asn.au Domain Name Registrations (fwd)

[Grant Malcolm]

On Sat, 27 Oct 2001, Peter Barker wrote:
> Point 4 on this page:
> http://www.west.net.au/asn.au/policy.cgi
> 
> ----
> *  There is currently no charge applied by Connect West for asn.au domain
> names. This will change by the end of 2001. If you register now, expect a
> bill sometime in the near future. Cost is likely to be in the order of
> AU$50 per year;
> -----

Which is fine, unless your organisation registered the domain several
years ago before this notice appeared. For these organisations the change
is unannounced and entirely unexpected. 

An email received 26 October notifying recipients that they will be issued
an unexpected bill for about $100 "During late October" is very poor
notice indeed. I imagine that many of the not-for-profit associations
affected will find it very difficult to pay this bill at such short
notice.

I can't help feeling that, with the support of thousands of the affected
associations, an application for federal assistance to ensure ASN.AU
registration remained free might have been well received - particularly in
the International Year of the Volunteer. Was this even considered? I know
the association i am personally involved in was not consulted. 

Finally, the Connect West home page still states in part "Connect West
offers self-registration of ASN.AU to correctly-configured domain name
servers at no cost." The page was updated August 18, 2001. If Connect West
knew there would be a change of policy affecting anyone registering a
ASN.AU domain, it would have been useful to include this information on
their home page. This page is potentially quite misleading.

Cheers
Grant

--------------------------------------------------------------
Website Co-ordinator, The University of Western Australia
http://cdc.cwis.uwa.edu.au
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E-mail: gmalcolm@cyllene.uwa.edu.au   Phone: +61 8 9380 1797