From: "Rob P" Date: 6 June 2011 11:54:34 AM AEST To: Subject: RESPONSE TO DRAFT RECOMMENDATIONS - R POLMAN Lujia Chen Policy Officer auDA. Thank you for the opportunity to present comment on the Draft Recommendations dated May 2011. Largely I am happy with most recommendations and so I will only provide comment on those I am not totally in agreement with. ISSUE 1C: POLICY ENFORCEMENT The recommendations do not go far enough to ensure a better and more defined process of handling complaints. While it is agreed that the Registrant Review Panel is a good thing, it appears to be designed only to operate where a decision has been made to delete a domain name. That implies the Respondent to a complaint gets a second chance but not the Complainant. This Review Panel should also be tasked with reviewing decisions where the complainant fails to have a complaint upheld and feels aggrieved and dissatisfied with the outcome. Most importantly, in my initial submission, I spoke about the need to specifically define the term "Close and Substantial". In my experience with auDA's complaints process, too much discussion and argument was based around the opinions of the person handling the complaint about what "Close and Substantial" meant. Every time I could defend an interpretation of "Close and Substantial" to try to have my complaint upheld, the opinion of the definition kept changing. A lot of the officer's time could have been saved if she had been provided with a definitive, measurable, explainable, definable definition that everyone can understand. I note there was no mention in the draft recommendations of requiring auDA to abide by auDRP findings. I believe this is an important consideration which should not be side- lined. If auDRP is given the task of formally deciding complaints where a complainant is not happy with an auDA decision, then why is auDA not required to consider and abide by auDRP rulings. In my case, my complaint was extremely similar to a case decided in favour of the complainant by auDRP, yet auDA refused to acknowledge it. This can result in a waste of resources where similar complaints will be heard by auDA and decisions conflicting with auDRP decisions are made resulting in potentially more cases being filed with auDRP. I feel certain that my suggestions would make it much easier for staff to work through the complaints procedure. ISSUE 1D: TWO YEAR LICENCE My original submission supported retaining a 2 year licence because statistics show that many businesses fail within 2 years. Because registration fees are not refundable in part, people just leave the domain registered and unused until it expires of its own accord. I HAVE DONE THIS MYSELF. I'm not suggesting a change to part refunds. I am saying that 2 years is long enough for a domain name to be unused and abandoned. If licence periods were to be extended past 2 years, the world wide web would be inundated with non-functioning domain names which would lead to unreliability. This is alluded to in comment 1.16 which I agree partly with - my disagreement being that domain names lie dormant after only two years. The reasoning behind increasing the registration period is flawed. The main reason seems to be that businesses don't like having to do all these renewals so often. This is an absurd excuse considering they must pay Company Fees annually to ASIC or be deregistered; they must pay for business name registration annually or be deregistered to name just a couple of requirements. It should not be impossible to accept 2 year re- registration of domain names. The Domain Registrars do a great job reminding registrants when domains are due for renewal. 2 year renewals should not be a problem or a burden. ISSUE 1F: SINGLE CHARACTER DOMAIN NAMES My original submission suggests it is simply not worth changing this policy to satisfy 36 registrants. After reading the draft recommendation, I would like to add further comment about the public consultation process. It disturbs me that the Policy Review Committee can write "The Panel notes that the majority of public comments were against the release of single character domain names" and then go on to totally ignore the majority and recommend they be allowed. It beggars the question "What is the point of this whole review process?" The issues raised are similar to mine. Without a specific and detailed definition of "Close and Substantial", which I have asked for earlier, how the devil does someone become entitled to use these single characters? Improve the Close and Substantial rules and my opposition to single character names would diminish. ISSUE 4: PROHIBITION OF MISSPELLINGS In my experience, auDA does not place enough importance on Misspellings cases. They did everything to allow a registrant to use a clear misspelling of my domain name which had been in use on my popular and working website for over 6 years. My complaint was finally disallowed after some obtuse and round-about way of deciding that the registrant of the misspelling had a Close and Substantial connection to the misspelling. The problem again is the lack of a clear definition of "Close and Substantial". I note there was no mention of requiring auDA to abide by auDRP findings. I believe this is an important consideration which should not be side-lined. If auDRP is given the task of formally deciding complaints where a complainant is not happy with an auDA decision, then why is auDA not required to consider and abide by auDRP rulings. In my case, my complaint was extremely similar to a case decided by auDRP, yet auDA refused to acknowledge it. This can result in a waste of resources where similar complaints will be heard by auDA and decisions conflicting auDRP decisions are made resulting in potentially more cases being filed with auDRP. There is also the issue of definition of brand names. It is not a requirement to register a brand name as a trademark. It IS a requirement to register a business name in order to conduct business. AuDA thinks differently, though. AuDA won't recognise a business name and tries to insist that a domain name must be a trademark. This issue caused a lot of correspondence between myself and auDA staff which should not have been necessary if auDA simply followed normal business practices. Another hurdle auDA tried to place in front of my complaint was that the brand name needed to be in physical advertising. Once again a hurdle out of line with what online businesses are about. Most online business do not advertise in the physical world as they are online only. In this matter, auDA needs to respect the standards set by governments for business and recognise that a brand name is a name that identifies a product or a business and has been in use for some time. Submitted by Rob Polman