Australia's domain name regulator is considering opening up the nation's top level .au domain, in a dramatic proposal that could see second-level domains such as "example.au" made available.
The regulator -- .au Domain Administration (auDA) -- is also considering allowing the public to sell their .au domain names, a practice that it has previously frowned upon, despite demand from some sections of the domain name community.
These and wider changes to rules governing how domain names can be registered are being debated by the regulator's Names Policy Panel, a new group within auDA which first met in early March this year.
The panel includes members from several different sections of the community -- notably Australian Computer Society president Phillip Argy, and Graham Ingram, the general manager of the Australian Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT).
auDA last week started surveying .au registrants and the general Internet-using public in Australia, to gauge opinion on the potential changes.
The regulator's chief executive officer, Chris Disspain, wasn't immediately available for comment, however, minutes from the panel's first meeting on 6 March 2007, available online, reveal the survey is the first of two public consultations on the issues slated to be held.
The minutes show the panel's first meeting featured a wide variety of opinions on the topic of Australian domain name policy.
"There are currently just over 700,000 com.au domain name registrations, compared with over 65 million .com registrations. This indicates that there is still ample room for growth in .com.au," was one opinion revealed by the minutes, for example.
However, an opposite view stated: "Is an increase in the number of domain name registrations necessary a good thing? There are other factors that should come in play in an assessment of 'community benefit'."
The commercial view
Larry Bloch, chief executive of NetRegistry -- one of the largest Australian domain name registrars and Web hosting companies -- noted some registrars had pushed for a more open local domain system during a recent review into auDA's operations conducted by the Department of Information Technology, Communications and the Arts (DCITA).
"I think it's really important to open up directly under .au, for a number of reasons," Bloch told ZDNet Australia today. "I see Australia as a brand in the globalised economy, and ultimately the utility of any domain name is enhanced if it's shorter and more recognisable."
"To my mind, any company.au address -- for example 'netregistry.au' or 'zdnet.au' -- is a more recognisable, memorable brand than .com.au."
"I really do feel that in the end, when we look back at 10, or 20 years, or however long it is, .com.au will have been a brief anomaly at the beginning of this whole era of domain names, and that ultimately it's just not as good as having registrations directly under .au."
Bloch noted, however, that if the .au domain was opened up, some practical problems would have to be addressed, for example, how to deal fairly with companies that had already registered .com.au addresses.
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