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

[Kimberley Heitman]

> At 03:43 PM 29/10/01 +1100, Tony Barry wrote:
> >>auDA are also doing the same thing to .id.au domains.
> >
> >These domains are mostly small scale and many charge $0 for the subdomains 
> >they provide, mine being one :-(
> 
> I wonder if auDA would be open to a request/submission of rescinding the 
> charge from .asn addresses.  To my knowledge [don't know about id.au 
> personally] .asn was the only domain space that was free and it was exactly 
> because they were restricted to non-profit type uses.  We had one for an 
> association I was involved with at one time that had little money.
> 
> Kimberly?  do you have any thoughts on this?  Other auDA members??
> 
> Jan

Speaking as the EFA auDA rep, rather than on behalf of the auDA Board, I'd
be happy if tenderers for the non-commercial domains looked at means of
keeping the price to the end user down - provided that the standard of
service was comparable with the commercial domains.

At this stage, the budget for introducing competition to all the .au
domains depends on cost recovery from tenderers. The cost of assessing
tenders, test-bedding the new registries and putting in place privacy
protections, escrow arrangements and service level agreements means that
auDA needs to recover these expenses from tendering organisations. 

Given the potential for abuse of a "non-profit" registry trying to mine
its database, or the potential for registry failure by relying on
volunteer staff and donated equipment, I have to say that the days of the
freebie domain name may be over. Once competition is in place, the
"wholesale" cost of a domain name will be cheap, but not free. The cost of
administering a .au registry will be cheap, but not free. Of those costs,
I really doubt that the annual fees to auDA will decide whether the
tenderer offers free domains to non-profit organisations - staff, rent and
infrastructure will be much bigger bills.

Having said that, it may be that a non-profit registry could survive on
grants or donations, and waive all charges to end-users. If so, swell -
but auDA isn't so well funded that waiving auDA licence fees and legal
costs is one of the options.

I am interested and generally supportive of what Adrian and Jeremy are
trying to do, and like them would like to see costs to end-users kept as
low as possible. I don't know necessarily that a wealthy charity has a
greater claim to a free domain name than a poor small business, but if a
plausible way of funding the costs of introducing competition in the
non-profit domains can be found, I'm all ears.

Kimberley Heitman

----------------------------------------------------------------------
                        Kimberley James Heitman
http://www.kheitman.com/                         kheitman@kheitman.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------