The Internet Commerce Association strongly objects to the auDA Board’s decision to approve in principle a Panel recommendation that, if implemented, would take away the right of Australian registrants, whether businesses, community organizations or domain name investors, to hold com.au and net.au domain names on the basis of the goods, services, events, activities or premises connected with them, rather than a registered name. Please read below for more information on the petition that was circulated, the auDA’s response, and how this will affect domain owners. You can read more about The ICA’s stance on this as well as our advocacy on our blog: https://lnkd.in/gM3s9anX
auDA Hits Back - Tries To Justify and Down Play The Accepted Policy Changes After The Australian news published an article on the proposed policy changes: https://lnkd.in/gKyQ-G6b Petition started/supported by the Registrars has over 1,000 signatures requesting auDA to not make this change here: https://lnkd.in/gvF9RW5D In response auDA released their own statement: https://lnkd.in/gBxqfvCa "we expect most registrants will already satisfy the proposed allocation" Trying to downplay the impact here, when the data is clear: 80% of existing registrants will be affected only 20% will not need to do anything. You can check where your domains falls here: https://lnkd.in/gChPuK25 2.7 million domains will need to do ONE of these things to meet the new policy: 1. If they have an existing Business Name that passes the other rules, will just need to contact their Registrar and perform a Change of Registrant OR 2. If they do NOT have an existing Business Name that matches one of the other eligibility requirements, they will need to go to ASIC and register a new Business Name and THEN contact their Registrar and perform a Change of Registrant. Examples of each case: 1. girl.com.au - Registered 25 Years Ago Current Eligibility is under: Trillion.com Pty Ltd parent company which happens to have a Business Name "GIRL.COM.AU" the domain owner will need to reach out to their Registrar and pay for a Correction/Change of Registrant to maintain eligibility. 2. gold.com.au - Registered 29 Years Ago Will need to go to ASIC to pay $47 per year for a new Business Name with the word "GOLD" in it to be eligible and then contact their Registrar and pay to do a Change of Registrant. auDA claims that a Correction is free, so that there will not be a cost to clients, technically that is true but what they don't tell you is that in reality, Registrars will not do free corrections and for good reason and instead will use the paid for Change of Registrant pathway to make these changes. Corrections are for mistakes and done rarely by Registrars as they require a Tech that has high level access and database access to perform changes in the database. Instead Registrars will use the common fee based Change of Registrant pathway to make these changes to the domains. A Change of Registrant costs the Registrar $9.50 The break up of this is around $6.00 goes to auDA $3.50 goes to the Registry - Identity Digital Registrars then charge a margin anywhere from $1.00 to $60.00 auDA stands to make a nice $16.2 million windfall from this policy change 2.7 Million domains x $6. A nice return for a policy change. We urge auDA to keep section (f) of the policy. No confusing grandfather options either.
