Domain name transfer policy changes for .au domains
Fri, Apr 18 2008

By Jonathan Oxer, IVT Technical Director

There are big differences in registration policies between different types of domain names: for example, ".com" has a "free for all" policy that allows anyone to register any name (with the exception of trademark breaches) and sell domain name registrations at will, while ".com.au" has much more strict policies that require registrants to be an Australian company, organisation, or registered trading name.

The result is that the .com namespace has been a hotbed of speculative trading and shifty practices with many people registering huge numbers of domain names and putting them on the market for sale to the highest bidder. It's now almost impossible to register a reasonable .com domain name because everything even remotely obvious (and a lot that look like random strings of characters!) has already been registered by someone, somewhere. The number of .com domain names has exceeded the number of words in the English dictionary many times over for quite a few years now.

Country-code top-level domains (known in the trade as "ccTLDs") such as ".com.au" have been largely spared the craziness of domain speculation due to more stringent registration requirements specifically intended to prevent domain trading. However, for .com.au those requirements have been just a bit too stringent because they have also prevented some legitimate domain transfers, or at least forced them "underground" with transfers being performed in breach of regulations. For example, a business which is acquired by a larger company typically has its assets transferred into the control of the acquirer - including not just physical infrastructure but also debt liability, creditors, and other assorted contractual arrangements. But because current .com.au registration requirements prohibit transfer domain registrations, there could be a grey area regarding how to handle any existing web and email infrastructure.

Last year auDA, the Australian domain name administrator, convened the 2007 Names Policy Panel to perform a review of .au registration requirements and sought input from various interested parties regarding possible amendments. Many internet professionals including myself provided submissions to the Policy Panel, and I'm pleased to say that the domain transfer policy has now been amended to incorporate many of those suggestions. The result is a policy that is structured in such a way to make pure domain speculation extremely difficult, while providing sensible rules to allow businesses to transfer domain ownership when required by legitimate business circumstances.

The new policy comes into effect on June 1st this year, and you can learn more details of the specific policy changes from the auDA website at

www.auda.org.au/news-archive/auda-14042008/