This stupid thing again? It’s a major reason why we had so few .aus in the first place.
I have an id.au domain and my registrar recently deregistered it on me until I provided proof that that was my private name.
The problem was that their main contact for me was the email address using my id.au domain!
Turns out, auDA caused all the registrars to panic and be overzealous. My registrar had also replaced all their support staff with a stupid algorithm.
I finally got it resolved using… the credit card I have used to pay my registration for the last 10 years!
I don’t understand the problem, both of mine seem fine. Can anyone explain how this is bad?
@ryannathans @vk6flab Firstly, not grandfathering existing names is bad. As continuity of email addresses is often assumed for authentication. So this will bring on some fraud.
Secondly, corporate names are often not the name traded under. Once worked for SOCOG, which you would know better as Sydney 2000 Olympic Games, which we branded as Sydney 2000. Even worse is the case where usage replaces the company name, as in Macca’s.
Thirdly, consumers often know the product name better than the company. Fanta being a good example here. But also the various franchise arrangements.
Fourthly, companies are not static. Changing all email addresses when A and B merge to become C is bad, but see also fraud above.
There is a lot of benefit to having the companies’ registry, rather than the trademark registry, be the final arbiter of domain disputes for .com.au. A small Australian company using ipod.com.au should not have to move because of a marketing decision by a US multinational. But this is not that policy.
it’s tricky though… this used to be exactly the rules until they removed a huge number of requirements for .au domains, and it helped to curb squatting. it wasn’t a perfect solution, but they number of squatted .au domains since the change has shot way up
to properly solve the issue of squatting, you can’t grandfather domains otherwise already squatted domains would be held probably for even longer because they can’t cheaply pick up more
you can probably introduce more rules with words like “primary business purpose” etc, but auDA just doesn’t have the resources to really litigate all the grey areas that’d introduce
but for sure if “registered business name” doesn’t including trading as names and things like ad campaigns then that’s incorrect
Those are good points, were all of those cases previously valid domains?
Well, the issue doesn’t affect me and I know very little about it - but from the article:
Under this new policy, every domain registered will strictly require a registered Business Name that exactly matches each domain name, whereas previously having a single active ACN or ABN was sufficient.
The reason it is bad is that a large number of Australian businesses are using .au domains which represent their business, but don’t exactly match the business name. So if the new policy is implemented then they will be forced to change their domain to match the business name; which I think we can all imagine could result in many problems.
Is that a problem for sole traders where the business name doesn’t match the registrant?
Anyone doing business under a name other than their legal name in Australia is supposed to register a business name so as not to breach the Business Names Registration Act 2011, and all business types (sole traders, companies, partnerships etc…) can register business names. The same legal entity can have more than one.
I think the question really is whether using a domain name is really the same as doing business as that name. For example, if Joe Bloggs owned flowers.com.au, and visiting the site showed a banner showing Joe Bloggs and underneath it the words Flower Shop, I think it is a reasonable case to say the business is trading as Joe Bloggs, and the Flowers part is identifying the service provided.
That said, Joe Bloggs could remedy the situation easily by registering Joe Bloggs Flowers - the auDA rules allow for registering domains that contain only part of the name (“Match means that the Domain Name being applied for is identical to one, some or all of words or numbers used in the Person’s Legal Name, Business Name or Australian Trade Mark. The Domain Name must use the words or numbers in the same order as they appear in the Person’s Legal Name, Business Name or Australian Trade Mark and must not include any additional words or numbers”). The Business Name registration rules have complex rules about duplicates, so if someone else already registered Joe Bloggs Flowers even though he had flowers.com.au, he could still come up with a different name that included the word Flowers and keep the domain. However, this would require paying to register the business name, and renewing it every year.
So it is creating a small extra expense for business owners that in some cases is probably not legally necessary, just to keep auDA happy.
The checker complains a domain will be invalid if it matches a sole trader’s ABN business name but the domain registrant is the person’s real name
I don’t know if auDA provides a checker - this might be a bug in some registrar checker given the rules say business names are allowed?
It’s the one linked from help.com.au
Probably bugged
Could you give some examples of problem domains that should be left as is? I don’t see the proposal as a problem at all.
@Sammirr @blind3rdeye brisbane2032.com.au will not be allowed for ticket sales for the 2032 Olympic Games. That would be www.bneocog.qld.gov.au.
Here’s an example. Let’s say my company is called Software Brothers. I have a product (among many) which is hosted on exampleproduct.com.au. Under these rules I would need to register a business name for every single web application, or restructure everything to go under a softwarebrothers.com.au subdomain.
URLs are not identifiers. This is a stupid decision.
About time. This will help to give some transparency about who operates the given domain.
