Days after the announcement
of Afilias' perversion of the Australian domain, the great news arrives - finally
those attractive generic names we've all been prevented from profiting from are going
to mega-buck auction.
Background: In OZ, the domain-name
admin was originally handled by a single, principled guy, rather than a greedy corporation.
Then he handed most of the role to a University (Melbourne), which spun off a dodgy
commercial unit to profit from the .com boom (its now a world leader). Mr Elz (the
founder/administrator/coordinator or .au) had taken steps to prevent most of the
generic names in .com.au from being taken - reserving most unallocated generics.
Grudgingly, MelbIT had enforced the policy of allowing only commercial
use of .com.au, and requiring actual existance of a registered company before name
registration {AND, the .com.au name had to be a simple derivation of the company
name}. This was then watered down to include "Business Names" - thus people could
simple register a business name for a non-existant business, pay the small fee, and
take the name. Subsequently this was even further watered down; however, only major
companies could do dodgy deals with MelbIT to grab the occasional generic.
Finally, ICANN shoved Mr Elz out of the scene, and paved the way for
the entry of Afilias. Now they have dumped his prohibition on 3006 generic names,
and are to auction them off via a dodgy third party commercial internet auction site....
in - wait for it -a "landrush" (sic).
The Onion!
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