TICK TOCK, auda votes close this Thursday

[snoopy]

Does auDA really want to spend millions more doing this to compete against what's has already been spent and done?

Part of the problem is that AUDA will make money from it no matter what, they might spend some money marketing it initially but the real market is defensive registrations. If they get their 500,000 registrations that is around $1million per year for AUDA.

 

[DomainNames]

Part of the problem is that AUDA will make money from it no matter what, they might spend some money marketing it initially but the real market is defensive registrations. If they get their 500,000 registrations that is around $1million per year for AUDA.

the stats from UK and NZ show the % uptake is nowhere near this amount. It also backfires by a drop in the .co.uk and .co.nz so overall minus growth and loss of revenue not a revenue increase Plus they spent a fortune trying to promote another un needed extension.. ALL which is domain name registrant fee money down the toilet.

Their greed has backfired. auDA and supply have the same risk now.... plus that lingering potential Class action lawsuit and conflicts of interest hanging over their head...

2015/ 2016 was the worst year for registrations, renewal and highest drop offs in United Kingdom and New Zealand....This is very different to what they had promoted would happen....

Their "more choice" "shorter simpler" "protect your brand and also register the shorter extension" Bull%^&$ was nothing more than a cash grab and people woke up and walked. There is No debating their reports and facts both have failed and $millions of money wasted plus damage done to the market global reputation and more costs , red tape, ip issues for business etc.

Registrars and supply would like people to register names in all 3000 competing domain name extensions.... Just imagine the costs.. Multinationals and even Google, Neustar, Melbourne IT, Ausregistry etc etc etc dont do this themselves

 

[findtim]

AUDA will make money from it no matter what

their meant to be impartial !

tim

 

[snoopy]

the stats from UK and NZ show the % uptake is nowhere near this amount. It also backfires by a drop in the .co.uk and .co.nz so overall minus growth and loss of revenue not a revenue increase. Plus they spent a fortune trying to promote another un needed extension.. ALL which is domain name registrant fee money down the toilet.

Yes I see, looking at .co.uk they have around 10million .co.uk and 600k .uk. So based on that .au might be 150k-200k. (not sure of the effect of .uk delayed registration system where people have several years to register).

I think .au is going to invite more competition (from .com) though if I were Ausregistry I'd push for .au as hard as possible. I just don't think the financial risk exists for Ausregistry and AUDA, it is easy money at the expense of registrants. If they degrade the overall space I suspect they'll still be better off. Lets face it Ausregistry is only doing what any other business would do but they should not have any legitimate seat at the table in terms of making decisions for a non profit organisation.

Looks like .co.uk/.uk is now a stagnant extension and has been for several years (replace 2016 in the link below with prior years to get the data). But would revenue be any better or any worse without the change? Maybe part of the problem is companies like Ausregistry keep talking about "growing the market" as though that is a good thing when in reality there is nothing really good about growing the number of unused domains.

http://www.nominet.uk/news/reports-statistics/uk-register-statistics-2016/

2015/ 2016 was the worst year for registrations, renewal and highest drop offs in United Kingdom and New Zealand....This is very different to what they had promoted would happen....

Their "more choice" "shorter simpler" "protect your brand and also register the shorter extension" Bull%^&$ was nothing more than a cash grab and people woke up and walked. There is No debating their reports and facts both have failed and $millions of money wasted plus damage done to the market global reputation and more costs , red tape, ip issues for business etc.

Have you got any stats for .nz over time?

 

[johno69]

Is it only proxy voting that ends Thursday?
We can still vote in person right?

 

[snoopy]

their meant to be impartial !

tim

Think there is problems surrounding that. I think it is easy for a not for profit to get carried away and think they need to make as much money as possible, AUDA is is that category, otherwise they would have reduced their own charges instead of stockpiling $10m. If they were focused on the community those charges would have been dropped long ago.

I feel also AUDA thinks a major part of its own responsibility is to look after itself, e.g. directors a sign a statement which reads

"As a director of auDA, your primary duty is to act in good faith and in the best interests of auDA at all times (rather than to any particular class of auDA's members, even if you have been elected by a particular class of auDA's members)."

That is warped in my view because those directors should be making decisions on the basis of the community, not AUDA. To me it is the kind of statement that a for-profit would have as a directors primary duty.

https://www.auda.org.au/pdf/board-directors-duties.pdf

 

[findtim]

We can still vote in person right?

i checked with Di and she said yes, you can vote at the AGM
tim

 

[DomainNames]

Yes I see, looking at .co.uk they have around 10million .co.uk and 600k .uk. So based on that .au might be 150k-200k. (not sure of the effect of .uk delayed registration system where people have several years to register).

I think .au is going to invite more competition (from .com) though if I were Ausregistry I'd push for .au as hard as possible. I just don't think the financial risk exists for Ausregistry and AUDA, it is easy money at the expense of registrants. If they degrade the overall space I suspect they'll still be better off. Lets face it Ausregistry is only doing what any other business would do but they should not have any legitimate seat at the table in terms of making decisions for a non profit organisation.

Looks like .co.uk/.uk is now a stagnant extension and has been for several years (replace 2016 in the link below with prior years to get the data). But would revenue be any better or any worse without the change? Maybe part of the problem is companies like Ausregistry keep talking about "growing the market" as though that is a good thing when in reality there is nothing really good about growing the number of unused domains.

http://www.nominet.uk/news/reports-statistics/uk-register-statistics-2016/
Have you got any stats for .nz over time?

NEW ZEALAND https://www.dnc.org.nz/resource-library/statistics/88
Note the growth was not in .co.nz or the additional .nz they added it was in other extensions they have.

What a mess! extensions cri.nz, ac.nz Geek.nz Gen.nz ( next generation young people) Seriously does it look like they have any clue?

Did they really need another extension due to "demand" NO it seems from the statistics and uptake, drop offs non renewals after 1 year of direct .nz.

.nz was a Minus% growth as people dropped the new extension at renewal time they reported and theye where not re registered by anyone else

.co.nz
.nz
.ac.nz
.cri.nz
.geek.nz
.gen.nz
.govt.nz
.health.nz
.iwi.nz
.kiwi.nz
.maori.nz
.mil.nz
.net.nz
.org.nz
.parliament.nz
.school.nz
1994-2016
This table shows year-on-year growth in the total number of domain names registered at 31 March.

Year Domain Names Growth since previous year % growth since previous year
31 Mar 2016 656607 24339 3.85%
31 Mar 2015 632268 82487 15.00%
31 Mar 2014 549781 23580 4.48%
31 Mar 2013 526201 48513 10.16%
31 Mar 2012 477688 44505 10.27%
31 Mar 2011 433183 39689 10.09%
31 Mar 2010 393494 40064 11.34%
31 Mar 2009 353430 28708 8.84%
31 Mar 2008 324722 51970 19.05%
31 Mar 2007 272752 51319 23.18%
31 Mar 2006 221433 39338 21.6%
31 Mar 2005 182095 32826 22.0%
31 Mar 2004 149269 24324 19.5%
31 Mar 2003 124945 17899 16.7%
31 Mar 2002 107046 17825 20.0%
31 Mar 2001 89221 32456 57.2%
31 Mar 2000 56765 26170 85.5%
31 Mar 1999 30595 12341 67.6%
31 Mar 1998 18254 8094 79.7%
31 Mar 1997 10160 6533 180%
31 Mar 1996 3627 2926 417%
31 Mar 1995 701 429 158%
15 Mar 1994 * 272 --- ---
* No data available for 31 March 1994.

 

[snoopy]

Cheers, yes looks like not much growth over several years. Looks like they have had stronger numbers for .nz (comparatively) versus .uk.

.com.au is is nearly the exact situation of near no growth. My gut feeling is the slow down in .co.uk and .co.nz has nothing much to do with new extensions but rather just the Google exact match changes since 2012. In .com.au we've seen prices come down in the aftermarket and there is probably a glut of registered names compared to 5 years ago when there was a much bigger market for exact match style domains.

 

[findtim]

Google exact match changes

you see a lot of long tail keyword EMD's dropping, so those registrations 6 + years ago were really a false positive on sales growth

tim

 

[findtim]

I got helena to fill out her proxy last night.
i said , download it, print it, sign it, scan it, and email it to me.
she said " WHAT, how stupid ! "
i said , yep, just gotta do it that way.
so she does, her scanner scans it at 300 dpi making each page (3) a 22MG file ! so she asks "now what" i said well reduce the size in photoshop, join them into a tall file and save as a pdf.
howwwwwwww many people know how to do that?
so anyway we do and its done.
I have to wonder how many people just do not vote because of this? as i have had many comments over the last few weeks about this exact subject of the difficulty of completing a hand signed vote.

auda will probably say " you can fax or post it" ! whats a FAX???? its a plastic box looking thing in a cupboard gathering dust that i have to drag out every now and then, disable the phones to plug it in and then try to remember how to use it.

I'd like for 3 things to happen.
1) i would like to know how many members DID NOT vote at this years election, given voting closes friday and AGM is monday it shouldn't be to hard to come up with a number, given that ever vote needs varifing.
2) After AGM contact members who didn't vote and ask WHY. Any good business would want to know this.
3) I would like this archaic system fixed before next AGM

less members leads to potential scamming/stacking of the vote outcome, less voters increases that risk

tim

 

[Shane]

I feel also AUDA thinks a major part of its own responsibility is to look after itself, e.g. directors a sign a statement which reads

"As a director of auDA, your primary duty is to act in good faith and in the best interests of auDA at all times (rather than to any particular class of auDA's members, even if you have been elected by a particular class of auDA's members)."

That is warped in my view because those directors should be making decisions on the basis of the community, not AUDA. To me it is the kind of statement that a for-profit would have as a directors primary duty.

It's definitely an issue, and goes back to the way that auDA was originally established.

It's not ideal that directors are elected by the people they seek to represent, but then have to act in auDA's best interests at all times irrespective of which class they supposedly represent.

I don't know if this is something that can ever be changed thanks to auDA's corporate structure, but as it sits right now, the Corporations Act requires that all company directors, be it of auDA or any other company, must act in the best interests of the company.

That being said, what one director believes is 'in the best interests' of auDA could be different to what another director believes, and neither or them might necessarily be wrong.

What drives me is the very first sentence of the auDA Constitution, and in particular the section in bold:

"Taking the view that the Internet Domain Name System is a public asset, and that the .au ccTLD is under the sovereign control of the Commonwealth of Australia, auDA will administer the .au ccTLD for the benefit of the Australian community."

On this basis, I'm comfortable with the view that direct registration are not going to benefit the Australian community, and therefore to oppose them would be acting in auDA's best interests.

 

[findtim]

and therefore to oppose them would be acting in auDA's best interests.

well put.

but then have to act in auDA's best interests at all times

i think that statement also reads "no .au" as WHY is having a .au "in auda's interests" ? it isn't, other then financial gain there is nothing else of interest.
given that financial gain will come from increased costs to members you go back to the first point of

benefit of the Australian community

tim

 

[johno69]

howwwwwwww many people know how to do that?

Combine in Acrobat is easier. I actually think if anyone is savvy enough to be an auDA member, they may be savvy enough to scan and email a document. Unless of course, as per your situation, it's getting your wife to join to vote for you ;-)

Which i'm sure is happening across the board.

 

[findtim]

helena is a domain name owner, with her own online businesses ( before she met me ) so has every right to be a member and until becoming a member without me would not have known anything about the decisions being made that directly concern her online business.

tim

 

[johno69]

helena is a domain name owner, with her own online businesses ( before she met me ) so has every right to be a member and until becoming a member without me would not have known anything about the decisions being made that directly concern her online business.

tim

Was she a member of auDA before she met you, or let's go another step, before you decided to run for the board?

It's ok, I wasn't. I joined to vote for the members running here. My point was just if someone was savvy enough to be an auDA member all by themselves, i'm sure they'd be savvy enough to scan and email a letter.

To put it another way yet again, auDA membership wouldn't attract people that are not "Technology Savvy".

 

[findtim]

she didn't know of auda before me, she wasn't a member until the original names policy call for panelists and i had YET to decide to run which shane and chris can back me up on. so she joined before i announced nomination.
at the time we were going to vote for simon ! but when he wouldn't answer dnt members questions that made me nominate.

wouldn't attract people that are not "Technology Savvy"

i don't agree but why make it hard for them.
tim

 

[johno69]

i don't agree

Agree to disagree.

but why make it hard for them.
tim

It's harder to join auDA than to scan and email a document IMO.

All the best to those running, I'll see you Monday.

 

[Shane]

All the best to those running, I'll see you Monday.

See you there Paul. It'll be good to meet you and other non-Qld members I haven't previously caught up with.