FEB DNT meetup

[snoopy]

I estimate that 30% of their existing customers are Australian's who are not yet eligible for a .com.au and need an alternative (Students, Artists, Stay at home mums and dads, Professors, Employees of large organisations). They already sell .com, .io, .xyz, .sydney and .melbourne domains to these customers. They would prefer to sell them a .au domain. Brett has dedicating almost two decades of his experience and literally thousands of hours of his time to explain to everyone that 1) There is already a demand for a .au domain that is recognisable and open to people BEFORE they have a business up and running. and 2) Making money from direct registrations is not the motivation (they make same money from .xyz or .au).

The obvious solution is to allow them to register .com.au domains. Very few people are going to choose to actually use a .au domain because they are ineligible for a .com.au.

Brett's role is to bring it in because MelbourneIT would make tens of millions of dollars. Nothing wrong with this but denying it is pointless.

Supply side should stop wasting their breath telling everyone they aren't going to make money. It reminds me of the supply side claim that the wholesale price won't drop if it went to tender because everyone's cost are going up, then we saw the price drop in half or more.

In my view supply side stands for higher costs to registrants, that is what is best for them.

 

[snoopy]

Another way to describe "least worst outcome" is the "most fair outcome" there is nothing inherently wrong with either description.

You are putting lipstick on a pig, it was described as the "least worst outcome".

 

[DomainShield]

well i am gonna ignore the above and state my timestamp TWO F'n 31am !!!

hows that for commitment? bloody vic transport and i am STILL not home, i am currently waiting for a cab at my end train station because they closed my train line, put me on a bus then a 1 hour wait for another train that then dumped me here !

but back to the meetup !

i knowwwwww i say it every time but they are GREAT, tonight we just debated the world and disagreed but we got to KNOW what each persons views really were.
so many positives for me came from tonight and one is that supply and demand need to come together and understand each other, on the surface this will be seen unpopular on dnt, it just a realisation that there are better ways then "the best worst way"

i stand for only the best way, and if that way is no way then that is the way, any logical organisation would chose that? surely.

tim

Tim, I am glad you managed to find your way back.

I believe that the way to implement change is not to delay it longer than is necessary. Potentially putting it off for another names panel and another board is not going to help. There is a certain amount of inevitability to change, it happens because something has momentum. You are perfectly positioned to see why it has momentum and you are trusted by all of us to guide it to a safe destination. I don't think this baby can be pushed back in.

 

[snoopy]

Tim, I am glad you managed to find your way back.

I believe that the way to implement change is not to delay it longer than is necessary. Potentially putting it off for another names panel and another board is not going to help. There is a certain amount of inevitability to change, it happens because something has momentum. You are perfectly positioned to see why it has momentum and you are trusted by all of us to guide it to a safe destination. I don't think this baby can be pushed back in.

It has no genuine momentum, the only push has come from registrars, Ausregistry and auDA. Business are not asking for it, the Australian public is not asking for it, most members are against it.

This will drag on for year and years, I think it will be lawsuits and mess. auDA may not even last, they seem to be 50% of the way to being scrapped already..

 

[DomainShield]

The obvious solution is to allow them to register .com.au domains. Very few people are going to choose to actually use a .au domain because they are ineligible for a .com.au.

Yeah, that would have been great for domainers. Only a little bit confusing for consumers and still great for domainers. It would have also been easy for Registrars to implement but it only provides a stop gap solution. SEO companies would have been fine and business would carry on as usual for a bit... until some student, artist or person on the street asked "why do we all still have .com in the middle of our extension, it feels outdated"

I don't want auDA to go for a stop gap solution in order to keep domainers and SEO experts happy. I believe that they are smart enough to aim for the best end result.

I also know that I said the only way to stop this happening was to prove that it was a bad idea, which was misunderstood by some to mean make lots of noise. Noise does not equate to proof, in fact the more people twist the Panels words to get attention and make a noise the more easily the rest of their message is assumed to be inaccurate. That makes me sad and I wish domainers could simplify their message to "we are domainers, this will hurt us in the the following ways, we want the following concessions".

Brett's role is to bring it in because MelbourneIT would make tens of millions of dollars. Nothing wrong with this but denying it is pointless.

This is not factually accurate at all. I know you know this and I know you know you have a flat world view on this. So for the benefit of anyone else reading this, Registrars make the same margin selling a .io or .xyz to a registrant instead of a .au (the actual margin is negligible at best and is often used as a loss leader to upsell hosting). Bringing .au to the table does not magically make a million more customers arrive at the registrars website, what it does do is provide an option for a registrar to offer .au INSTEAD of .io... they still make their profit elsewhere.

Supply side should stop wasting their breath telling everyone they aren't going to make money. It reminds me of the supply side claim that the wholesale price won't drop if it went to tender because everyone's cost are going up, then we saw the price drop in half or more.

I am not sure why this is so hard to understand. It is the same money, there is not extra money. Instead of selling a .io or .xyz we sell them a .au. The market for Australians wanting hosting does not change because of direct registration so there is no significant extra money as there is no extra demand initially for hosting. There is still however a demand for .au (instead of .io or .xyz) and they want to keep registrants inside our namespace where auDA can protect and support them rather than forcing them to go elsewhere. In the LONG LONG LONG term (like when my kids have kids) there is a good chance that a student or artist or person on the street does something innovative with a .au domain and that leads to more demand for hosting which might benefit MelbourneIT and that might benefit Brett's pension and he might be able to buy a better bottle of Bourbon. What I do know is that either way Brett will still like Bourbon, he will still share his experiences over a tumbler of Bourbon and he will still maintain that he did not do this for the money.

In my view supply side stands for higher costs to registrants, that is what is best for them.

This is too simplistic a view of it.
Profitability on the supply side has almost nothing to do with the wholesale cost of a domain name, it is much more important to them to keep their costs relating to support and maintaining security down. We don't want change and we don't want risk. For us those things rank higher than getting a slightly better wholesale price. Domainers are caught in the middle of that equation so it is understandable you get annoyed. You should probably replace the word "registrants" with "domainers" in your statement to be more accurate as the cost to the average registrant who is not a portfolio holder will not change significantly at all.

 

[snoopy]

Registrars make the same margin selling a .io or .xyz to a registrant instead of a .au (the actual margin is negligible at best and is often used as a loss leader to upsell hosting). Bringing .au to the table does not magically make a million more customers arrive at the registrars website, what it does do is provide an option for a registrar to offer .au INSTEAD of .io... they still make their profit elsewhere.

Brett's employer, MelbourneIt charge $154 for a .com.au registration. .au enables them to sell 100,000 or more registrations to their existing .com.au customers. Tens of millions of dollars of extra revenue at the expense of business.

It is not about "new customers", that pool is shrinking.

 

[DomainShield]

It has no genuine momentum, the only push has come from registrars, Ausregistry and auDA. Business are not asking for it, the Australian public is not asking for it, most members are against it.

This will drag on for year and years, I think it will be lawsuits and mess. auDA may not even last, they seem to be 50% of the way to being scrapped already..

That is a bit dramatic.

Ausregistry is gone so lets stop dragging them into it. auDA is a neutral organisation, they are a not for profit and they are tasked with looking at what is good for the australian internet community as a whole so they are probably not generating momentum. There are no registrars on the board and there are no registry operators on the board either so no one is there to create momentum or giving this idea any legs.

There is a fair chance it will drag on for years, if the current panel blocks it or the current board blocks it and that would damage the aftermarket further. There is also a remote chance that auDA will not survive as an organisation but there will always be an organisation that oversees the namespace and there will always be a process for an idea which is for the good of the majority of people to be presented and eventually accepted.

Your idea that it does not have genuine momentum is being put to the ultimate test right now. Predicting that it will drag on for years however does contradict your assertion that it has no genuine momentum. The only way it could maintain momentum with no registry or registrar within a nautical mile of it is if it had momentum all along.

 

[snoopy]

Ausregistry is gone so lets stop dragging them into it. auDA is a neutral organisation, they are a not for profit and they are tasked with looking at what is good for the australian internet community as a whole so they are probably not generating momentum. There are no registrars on the board and there are no registry operators on the board either so no one is there to create momentum or giving this idea any legs.

There is nothing neutral about auDA, plenty of discussion about supply side capture even going back a decade ago. This was particularly the case when direct registrations was passed in 2016.

 

[DomainShield]

Brett's employer, MelbourneIt charge $154 for a .com.au registration. .au enables them to sell 100,000 or more registrations to their existing .com.au customers. Tens of millions of dollars of extra revenue at the expense of business.

It is not about "new customers", that pool is shrinking.

I wish capitalism (or even life) worked like that. The value of MelbourneIT shares would have increased 1000 fold when 1400 new gTLDS where introduced. What actually happened? Well nothing nearly as dramatic as that happened.

Also lets drop some of the dramatics as we all know revenue does not equal profits and when you talk about domain names with an average price of $10-$14 per year and an average margin of $1 - $2 which after costs is actually a loss to the company. You cannot possible expect us to be naive enough to believe that they are doing this primarily to upsell a defensive registration? There is also no evidence in other name spaces of a sudden doubling up of registrations with the introduction of direct registrations. If that was true, if .uk had doubled in size or .nz doubled in size then yes I would buy your argument (except there is still a great big hole in your logic as they don't make a profit from domain names, they make a profit from web hosting. Defensive registrations do not equal more hosting!

 

[snoopy]

I wish capitalism (or even life) worked like that. The value of MelbourneIT shares would have increased 1000 fold when 1400 new gTLDS where introduced. What actually happened? Well nothing nearly as dramatic as that happened.

Most businesses have no interest in new tlds.

A percentage of Australian businesses will have an interest in protecting their brand when a confusing similar domain is going to be released. That is why registrars and the registry have been so vocal in attempting to push this through, it is very easy money for them.

 

[DomainShield]

There is nothing neutral about auDA, plenty of discussion about supply side capture even going back a decade ago. This was particularly the case when direct registrations was passed in 2016.

That is again a bit dramatic.
There was a discussion about the theoretical possibility that the supply side could get our employees who are registrants to signup as demand class members in order to stack the board and get something done. The inverse is also theoretically possible where demand class members can signup as resellers and capture the supply side of the equation too. This is a discussion for the constitutional reform panel, maybe we should be classless members?

You are making a wild accusation that this was the case in 2016 without backing it up with any facts. Would you care to name even one demand class director from 2016 who works for a Registrar so auDA can look into this? Even if you could name one, what about all the independents? You cannot get a majority vote without them, especially if any of the demand class directors could not vote due to a conflict of interest.

Is there a possibility that there is genuine momentum and you are retrofitting a conspiracy theory which if true would have been used by the current directors to overturn the 2016 decision? They have access to all this info, they can see who voted on what, they can also see a much bigger picture that either of us can.

 

[DomainShield]

Most businesses have no interest in new tlds.
A percentage of Australian businesses will have an interest in protecting their brand when a confusing similar domain is going to be released. That is why registrars and the registry have been so vocal in attempting to push this through, it is very easy money for them.

This does not seem to be sinking in but this is not easy money.
No one is going to lose their existing domain name.
No one is going to be forced to re print their stationary.
No one is forced to buy the .au domain.
If they do buy it defensively then I predict that in 99% of the cases it will cost less than what they spend on dish washing liquid per year.

There are already competing extensions doing potential "damage" to their brand as you claim. Just because two things share the same name does not make them confusingly similar and does not mean the rest of the world needs to stop moving forward to protect them. It is like asking the Australian Government to stop issuing passports and birth certificates to anyone with the surname Macdonald so you can protect a burger chain from potential damage to their brand.

In the unlikely scenario where a brand cannot get their .au and the new registrant of a .au starts pretending to be them, there are separate and existing ways for them to protect their brand. In fact auDA and the auDRP provider a cheaper and quicker path for them to protect their brand if we have direct registration (auDA has no control over what a competitor does with a .io or .xyz domain).

There is a potential for type in traffic from a com.au to go to the .au when people get used to leaving off the .com but there is a much bigger risk from typos right now so again it is not worth not moving forwards because of a small amount of inconvenience for a small number.

Lets talk percentages....
30 million Australians, 27 million of them denied meaningful access to .au domain extension.
3 million .com.au domains registered to 2 million companies
300 thousand non -.com.au domains
90 thousand contested domains.

While it is true that we cannot do "no harm" it is possible to argue that the needs of 27 million registrants outweigh a small cost ($20 each) to 300 thousand companies who care about brand protection and the larger but not insurmountable inconvenience to 90 thousand registrants who must pass through a phase of contention (lottery, auction whatever).

 

[DomainNames]

I don’t get it.
Brett Fenton states his position is for direct reg, everyone else states their position against it and you think Brett needs to be removed?
The whole point of the panel is to have representatives on it, with experience and with a point of view. The others more than balance the odds.
He has heaps of industry experience, he has heaps of policy review experience too. He was even around before auDA.

How can you not get it?

• https://www.domainer.com.au/rocking-the-boat/ Read This!
  
• Do you know what "false and misleading" statements and claims means?
• Do you know what the obligations of an accredited Supply Registrar are what not to do?
• Do you know what the obligations of a company Director are?
• Do you know what the obligations of a names panelist where what not to do?
  
• Did you hear Brett Fenton whole presenting for the auDA PRP falsely claim the .uk extension is now the preferred extension over the .co.uk at the Melbourne PRP meeting?
• Did you vote yes after receiving Yes only vote forms and surveys and pro forma templates etc?

The list goes on... but I understand the Supply side support and need to "push this in" as was claimed on the material put out.

Let's have all of the Perth, Sydney, Melbourne , Brisbane auDA PRP meeting Audio and presentation material made public on the auDA website!.. Then we can debate it even more quoting them!

When are drop catchers planning to put on a notice to customers on the websites about the suggested auDA proposals and how it may affect the buyers/ consumers rights to even get the proposed competing .au extension?

The fact is if bidders on the drop auctions all knew after reading the suggestions in a disclaimer or notice would they continue to bid? They should be allowed to decide with this information told to them.

Drop catchers know...it is causing havoc and it is clear who is calling to "push this in". It is on public record.

 

[snoopy]

This does not seem to be sinking in but this is not easy money.
No one is going to lose their existing domain name.

The issue is the that auDA is allocating a bunch of confusing similar domains, for someone like realestate.com.au, news.com.au, cars.com.au and the other 90,000 they will be pushed into paying to protect their existing brands.

MelbourneIt and others will be just about printing money if this comes in with all the duplicate registrations between .com.au & .au. All they need to do is send out some emails telling customers a competitor get "their name" it if they don't.

 

[DomainShield]

How can you not get it?

• https://www.domainer.com.au/rocking-the-boat/ Read This!

I have read it, it basically says that Ned and Brett where on the 2015 Names Panel (I know this already as I was a participant) Then it goes on to say that Brett has made an incorrect assumption. According to Ned Domainers actually want .au domains as long as they get first rights to them. I am not sure that any of this contradicts or disproves anything I have said here. Would you care to elaborate on your understanding of the blog piece.

• Do you know what "false and misleading" statements and claims means?

I speak English but I am not a lawyer so I do presume to understand what a false and misleading statement means to a lay person. What I am curious to know is if this is supposed to be a threat as I don't even understand why you are bringing this up.

• 
  

  [*]Do you know what the obligations of an accredited Supply Registrar are what not to do?

I am generally aware of the obligations for an accredited Supply Registrar (as I have owned one, I have worked for something like 20 of the 42, and I am still currently a Director of one of them). With regards to what we are not supposed to do there is a very long list so perhaps you could narrow it down a little bit for me. Plus if you have a valid concern about someone breaching their obligations then open up an Industry complaint via auDA.

• Do you know what the obligations of a company Director are?

I am not an expert or a lawyer but I have a laypersons grasp of it and I have a little experience with it too.

• 
  

  [*]Do you know what the obligations of a names panelist where what not to do?

Yes, I have sat on a names panel before so unless it changed recently then I have a pretty good idea and actual experience of meeting those obligations.

• Did you hear Brett Fenton whole presenting for the auDA PRP falsely claim the .uk extension is now the preferred extension over the .co.uk at the Melbourne PRP meeting?

I was at the Melbourne meeting. I sat through the whole thing including all the morning sessions where the important groundwork for the afternoon session was explained to us. The panel was there to tell us their ideas and for us to give feedback. If you have a different option on how .uk is trending then you are encouraged to make a submission with data to disprove or add to their ideas. To take their quotes out of context and to try to get attention rather than participating in the process is silly as you end up not being on record where it counts. I am not here to judge the accuracy of his statements or to be baited into agreeing with your assertions. He was being open and honest with his opinion in the context of giving you suggestions to work with.

• Did you vote yes after receiving Yes only vote forms and surveys and pro forma templates etc?

I do not remember if I got the Yes email or not but I was aware of it, I also got an email to vote No but I ignored both of them as I was already on the panel and I was already on the record as wanting direct registration.

The list goes on... but I understand the Supply side support and need to "push this in" as was claimed on the material put out.

Was this a test to detect a false and misleading statement? I believe the wording was to "push for it"

Let's have all of the Perth, Sydney, Melbourne , Brisbane auDA PRP meeting Audio and presentation material made public on the auDA website!.. Then we can debate it even more quoting them!

When are drop catchers planning to put on a notice to customers on the websites about the suggested auDA proposals and how it may affect the buyers/ consumers rights to even get the proposed competing .au extension?

The proposals are from a panel not from auDA, there is a big difference between these two things.
They are also suggestions, literally discussion points, nothing is set in stone.
With that in mind what exactly would that notice look like and how much information would I need to provide access to? It literally took the panel 4.5 hours just to go into enough history to allow us to have an informed discussion on the subject, how would I present that much information to my customers? All of this could come to nothing and get rejected by the board, how much of my customers time would I have wasted by forcing this discussion on them. The fact remains that no domain purchased from me is at risk of being taken away from the customer, they will get what they paid for and they can keep that domain as per current policy. Even if .au came along it cannot be assumed or proven to be a bad thing for my customers.
I have my mobile number printed on our homepage and in all my emails. I talk to customers who are interested enough to call me to talk about it all the time.

The fact is if bidders on the drop auctions all knew after reading the suggestions in a disclaimer or notice would they continue to bid? They should be allowed to decide with this information told to them.

I cannot discern the fact you alluded to at the beginning of this statement. There is too much information and too many variables for me to be able to present this data to customers realistically. There do not appear to be any facts yet, there is lots of noise and lots of conflicting views, there are even an abundance of assumptions and proposals but there is nothing concrete for me to communicate.

Drop catchers know...it is causing havoc and it is clear who is calling to "push this in". It is on public record.

Havoc is such a strong word, it is like a catastrophe or a disaster... it gives you no more wriggle room to describe something worse. How would you describe losing the monetisation rule for .com.au domains... to me that would seem worse than direct registration... what if they went back to the exact match rule... how would one describe that if you have already wasted all the strong words on Brett.


I think that the truth is hidding somewhere in the middle of all this noise. I cannot honestly call it one way or another but in the end it usually turns up and until we read the history books it will be hard to tell who is right and who is wrong.

 

[DomainShield]

The issue is the that auDA is allocating a bunch of confusing similar domains, for someone like realestate.com.au, news.com.au, cars.com.au and the other 90,000 they will be pushed into paying to protect their existing brands.

So we agree that only 3% of registrant are going to be affected? Can we agree to no more talk about this affecting small businesses?

Also auDA is not allocating a bunch of domains, registrants still have to apply for the domains and they have to agree to the terms and conditions of the policy. No one is going to be able to pretend to be "Realestate.com.au Pty Ltd" even if they manage to get realestate.au... if anyone passes off as REA then they are going to lose the domain faster than you can say auDRP. If anyone undertakes deceptive and misleading conduct on a .au domain then I am confident that REA (or any registrant for that matter) has recourse to legal proceedings they could bring against them. Remember auDA cannot help them if the other party tries to build a brand on realeastate.io or xyz or any other of the 1400 gTLD.

There is a reality that big brands have pressure on their brands with or without direct registration. Big brands built on generic terms have even more pressure on their brands, again with or without direct registration. I think it was described by a panelist as being a known downside of choosing a generic term. So do we need to stop direct registration in order to protect them? I don't think so and while I don't mean to be nasty to them or wish them any harm, it was their decision to use a generic term, they got all the benefit of it being generic and this is one of the costs of having got that benefit.

MelbourneIt and others will be just about printing money if this comes in with all the duplicate registrations between .com.au & .au. All they need to do is send out some emails telling customers a competitor get "their name" it if they don't.

I'd also like to make an important point here that monies potentially paid to competing registrants to get their rights to a .au domain will not go to registrars, auDA or a registry operator. That would be a transaction between registrants (domain owners).
With regards to emails about competitors getting their name if they don't, that is already a "thing" that has already been done for net.au and generally speaking it does not work as well as it did before the gTLDS got introduced. Brand protection via registering every possible extension is not common practice anymore and like I said before does not lead to extra hosting sales or extra services which is where the money is.

 

[snoopy]

So we agree that only 3% of registrant are going to be affected? Can we agree to no more talk about this affecting small businesses?

Of course it is going to effect small business. Some will have conflicts and will have to pay to resolve them (via whatever method auDA thinks up). The ones who don't will be pressured into protecting their brand anyway.

I'd also like to make an important point here that monies potentially paid to competing registrants to get their rights to a .au domain will not go to registrars, auDA or a registry operator. That would be a transaction between registrants (domain owners).

auDA's lottery model has no chance of survival and I think they would know it. Hit people with the worst model possible first and whatever comes after will look far better. Expect an auction proposal eventually, I think that is what auDA really wants because it is millions of dollars of revenue.

 

[DomainShield]

Of course it is going to effect small business. Some will have conflicts and will have to pay to resolve them (via whatever method auDA thinks up). The ones who don't will be pressured into protecting their brand anyway.

10% of registrants might feel pressured to take up their .au defensively.
3% of registrants will be affected by conflict.
These numbers are very low.

auDA's lottery model has no chance of survival and I think they would know it. Hit people with the worst model possible first and whatever comes after will look far better. Expect an auction proposal eventually, I think that is what auDA really wants because it is millions of dollars of revenue.

auDA wants to do what is fair, make a suggestion on what is fair and they will take it. They have to take fair over money every day of the week. Not saying an auction will not happen, just saying that it will not be a case of chasing money, it will be because of the perception of fairness.

 

[snoopy]

10% of registrants might feel pressured to take up their .au defensively.
3% of registrants will be affected by conflict.
These numbers are very low.

10% will defensively register
3% will have a conflict
87% won't know or care

Where is the positive in all of this? (aside from revenue for registrars)

auDA wants to do what is fair, make a suggestion on what is fair and they will take it. They have to take fair over money every day of the week. Not saying an auction will not happen, just saying that it will not be a case of chasing money, it will be because of the perception of fairness.

auDA is desperate to increase its bank balance, that is why they will not announce the new registry pricing, they want to keep most of the saving rather than pass it on to consumers. They want $50 million in the bank......more. They got knocked back on their ambition to run the registry by members but they'll try and claw back a lot of the revenue anyway.

Of course an auction will be to chase money, it may well be $10million for them.

 

[Scott7]

Great night! Thanks Erwin, Chris, Tim, Anthony and Nic. Thanks also to Domain Shield for sponsoring the night. Looking forward to the next one. Cheers!