According to smh.com.au, folowing the led of New Zealand and the Britain, Australia’s regulatory body for domain names, .au Domain Administration (auDA), recently announced its 2015 Names Policy Panel proposal that individuals and entities should be allowed to register domain names directly under .au, for example www.abc.au in addition to .com.au
Under the proposal, domains ending with com.au, net.au etc would remain available but direct registrations under .au “would create more options”
“They include names that are shorter, more appealing and more memorable. “They would make the domain name system simpler and easier to use.”
According to the story existing .com.au domain holders will get six months to register for a comparable .au domain and there are 3 million registered domains in Australia today.
If Australia goes this direction, as I think they ultimately will, then they ought to model the rollout of .AU on .UK.
When Nominet introduced direct SLD registrations in .UK, they awarded .CO.UK registrants the right to register matching .UK domains at any point during a 5 year period, during which time nobody else would be able to cut in line ahead of them. Phasing in .AU gradually like that would go a long way toward protecting consumers. It would safeguard registrants, giving them time to prepare for the change and spread out any extra costs over a wider period.
As a member of the 2015 Names Policy Panel established by auDA, I find some of the statements in that SMH article amazingly inaccurate.
Obviously given that the Names Panel is still going (final meeting next month), I’m not at liberty to disclose current deliberations or possible final recommendations.
But one thing I can say with total certainty. The statement by David Lye that “it is likely existing .com and .com.au domain holders will get six months to register for a comparable .au domain” is no more than a supposition or wishful thinking on his part (or the journalist may have incorrectly quoted him).
“According to the story existing .com.au domain holders will get six months to register for a comparable .au domain”
Wrong.