http://www.netregistry.au.com/
A Sydney based company is running this.
According to http://www.aunic.net/cgi-bin/whois , the domain
".au.com" was registerd on 3 April 1998 and the admin and tech
contact is one "Domnique Main": dmain@NETREGISTRY.AU.COM.
I regard this as a highly confusing approach to domain names. Any
company taking up a domain under .au.com will face the constant
problem of explaining the reversal of the typical order of these
"words" to everyone they contact, via email, web and in print. They
will cause some people to make mistakes, and use .com.au instead - so
creating undeliverable or unwanted email (or dead or wrongly
directed HTTP sessions) which are a burden to users and other
companies.
My real gripe is if the use of .au.com becomes prevalent - it will
burden many .com.au people with having to explain that "Yes it is
.com.au, not .au.com."
Why would anyone register an xyz.au.com domain? In the case where
the xyz.com.au domain was taken - and the person is not associated
with xyz - then this spells trouble.
If xyz was not taken in .com.au, and you were "xyz", then why would
you choose not to register it there?
Right now, it seems that for $199 I could register:
microsoft.au.com, ibm.au.com, news.au.com etc. Also, anyone else
could register firstpr.au.com.
According to:
http://www.bluetongue.com.au/domainnames/info.html
there are 1721 names under .au.com,
The current list of names is at:
ftp://ftp.bluetongue.com/domains/ASN.AU.980616
However, trying some of these, such as:
australian-jurists.au.com
twu-vic.au.com
wheelchair-sports.au.com
creditunion.au.com
at
http://www.aunic.net/cgi-bin/whois
http://www.aunic.net/namestatus.html
and by directly querying the .au.com name server, yielded no
results.
These systems do work - for instance the nameserver and the
namestatus.html reported information about "netregistry.au.com"
and the listed names:
copyright.au.com
employment.au.com
It's hard for me to see anything positive about this new set of
domains.
- Robin
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Robin Whittle rw@firstpr.com.au http://www.firstpr.com.au
Heidelberg Heights, Melbourne, Australia
First Principles Research and expression: music, Internet
music marketing, telecommunications, human
factors in technology adoption. Consumer
advocacy in telecommunications, especially
privacy. Consulting and technical writing.
Real World Electronics and software for music: eg.
Interfaces the Devil Fish mods for the TB-303.
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