</journalist>
IMNSHO, there are several things wrong with the inordinate amount of
time NOIE is devoting to the ccTLD issue.
One, it is not going to matter a tinker's cuss to Australian business or
to the development of e-commerce in this country. AFAI can see, it is
all about the NOIE ppl strutting about on the world stage. NOIE has
this thing called a sunset clause, which means it's going to wind up
soon. Surely there are better and more constructive things for it to do
in the short time it has available than to just hold open its trouser pocket?
Two, within the DNS issue itself (which is hardly earth-shattering
anyway), the .au space is far more relevant to Australian businesses
than .com or .net are. You only have to look at the figures boasted by
Melbourne IT - 95% of Oz businesses register in .com.au. Even if you
prefer NetRegistry's figure of 60, it still means that the more time
spent on ccTLDs and the less spent on the au TLD, the less credible NOIE
appears to Australian businesses. Whatever happened to the
NOIE-sponsored meeting about what to do about ADNA?
Three, the DNS issue itself is vitally important to about a dozen people
in its particular industry, but now that Melbourne IT has calmed the
uproar over its pricing by providing a good service, it is far less
important to business than another looming issue. The issue of
international agreements between PARRAs in an authentication network,
raised in the Australian yesterday (Australian, 6/10/98, p33, "NOIE
urged to set up security body"), is much closer to Karen's idea of
global governance. I'm not sure that NOIE should get involved, really,
but its concept of a National Authentication Authority is something that
deserves a lot more attention, hard work, publicity and consultation
than what the ccTLD issue is getting.
<journalist> Hmmm. Might I say that the previous probably sounds more
strident than was meant, and I do not wish to criticise individual
workers within NOIE. It's just an email.
-- Paul Montgomery, features editor for Image & Data Manager and assistant editor for Internet World. Lives like a JavaBean. Fan of Robert Rankin. Tel: +61 2 9318 2644. Fax: +61 2 9310 4608. mailto:monty@knapp.com.au http://australia.internet.com “I am a railroad track abandoned.” (JB)