With all the talk over the past 12 months about the possible introduction of direct registrations in Australia, I read an article yesterday on the auDA news feed (collated by David Goldstein) that put a smile on my face.
Why? Because it reminded me that there are other domain spaces in the western world where you wouldn’t or couldn’t be a domainer!
Have a read of this article from The Irish Times about the domain space in Ireland – and in particular, the secondary market.
“Proposal to allow Irish domain names to be resold”
The article seems to describe domain investors / domainers as potentially being “unauthorised domain sellers” or “rogue traders”. Ouch!
“By creating a regulated secondary market, we are providing increased access to a respected and valued domain while protecting consumers from rogue traders,” said IEDR chief executive David Curtin.
Fond Memories
Over the past eight years, we’ve actually come a long way in Australia with our domain space.
Prior to 2008, no one could easily sell a domain name here! Then, after another working group, auDA introduced a 6 month qualifying rule; and eventually, that was relaxed too. I wrote about this in a post on Flying Solo back in 2011.
Whilst it is sometimes easy to be critical of auDA, I think they have slowly but surely moved to improve .au. Almost every year, there’s been a working group or panel comprising a cross section of industry participants that has looked at how .au can be improved for the benefit of stakeholders. Not every recommendation gets the nod from the auDA Board, but many have. For that, they should be congratulated imo.
Obviously, there is the contentious subject of direct registrations in Australia which is currently under consideration. People who read Domainer well know my opinion on this. But that’s another story altogether!
Ned O’Meara – 22 July 2016
Disclaimer
Be thankful for small mercies, eh?
Good point Ned, but we’ve always been the “lucky country”, haven’t we?
I commend you again on all your early work in playing a big role in allowing Australian domain names to be monetised and bought and sold. It was way before my time, but I sure would have been batting right next to you if I were around during that time! It is crazy for it to be any other way. I can not imagine a world where domain names couldn’t be bought and sold? Just wouldn’t make sense.
In regards to auDA though…
I must say I have had quite a few negative experiences with auDA, on and off over the last two years, but mostly due to weak communication, lack of customer support and template-robot-style, general-enforcement of policy rules from one particular individual who works there. I won’t carry on with too much negativity at this point, but let me say perhaps auDA don’t have the perfect formula of employees at their organisation at present. Sometimes a change is as good as a holiday. It’s possible for people to get burnt out and jaded.
Look at Netfleet, for example. The new Business Manager; Nikki Scholes, seems to be playing by the rules, enforcing them fairly, with a fresh, personal-touch and speed-of-reply that seems to be helping them to turn their entire reputation around, albeit slowly but surely. I recently had an email conversation with her back and forward within an hour of having a problem with the Netfleet system. There’s no way Netfleet ever did this before?! Not since I’ve been a regular on the scene… Can she keep it up? I hope so!
But back to auDA. On a positive note, I have been dealing with Jo Lim quite a bit over the past few months and I have nothing but great words to say about her. She seems to be thorough in judging policy for individual situations and is fair and fast in her reactions to putting out small fires so they don’t become massive, unnecessary eruptions.
Whilst I’m in the mood for positive shout-outs, I must say I am loving the support and dedication of my account manager at my registrar at the moment. He seems to actually *care* if I’m going to lose some money due to an oversight!! He’ll ring me up and say, “Hey, just looking at your account, did you know…”
And yes, direct-registrations are still a very contentious issue. Although the initial *intensity* I had myself, as well as many other domainers I spoke to at the time were having, (except for you, Neddy, you’ve always been a solid rock in this industry 🙂 no one really knows what is going to happen. How are the public going to respond once they *really* understand what this is going to mean to them? What are the rules for grabbing a new .au going to be? When will the cut-off date for current-ownership of all existing TLDs that give you rights to own the new direct ccTLD version of your name be released?
I wonder how long auDA are going to let this carrot dangle, before giving us all an official release date and putting us out of our misery?
We can all speculate on how this is going to go down. But, no one knows…
I’m sure there will be a whole new blog dedicated to this in the not too distant future, right from this very website!