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David
Warmuz, CEO of Melbourne-based tech
powerhouse, Trillion.com
(parent of Above.com, Help.com and other well-known
Internet brands), wrote, " over 1 million .com.au
domains will require a new Business Name Registration or a new Trademark registration and then Change of Registrant done. We estimate that this is going to cost Small Business owners
$500 million to fix and a good $200 million every year to
maintain. This is a great win for the Australian Government through ASIC and IP Australia services, but
all at the cost of Small Businesses." It
is quite odd that the new rule applies only to
the .com.au flavor of Australian domains -
not .net.au, .org.au or even the top level marquee
domain - .au (a direct option that only
opened to the public for the first time in 2022).
Only .com.au - the one business people counted on
- is affected in an inexplicable move that instantly
makes it a toxic TLD.
One
veteran Aussie domain investor/developer, Ned
O'Meara, wondered if this was a calculated
plan meant to drive up .au sales that,
with about 300,000 registered domains, remain just a
small fraction of the millions registered in .com.au.
The issue with that now is how could anyone
trust AuDA not to eventually pull the same
bait and switch on .au holders that they
have on com.au registrants? The one thing they
have succeeded in doing with this move is
taint the entirety of one of the world's great
country code TLDs. The
mistake is so monumental, we would guess that
between now and when the rule gets implemented, AuDA is going to face an enormous
amount of blowback from the business
community and a variety of legal challenges
that may stop the madness before the damage is
irreversible. |
"Trust
takes years to build, seconds to
break, and forever to repair." - Dhar
Mann |
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