After The Australian news published an article on the proposed policy changes:
More Than 27m Businesses at Risk of Losing Web Domain Names
Petition started/supported by the Registrars has over 1,250 signatures requesting auDA to not make this change:
Stop auDA Proposed Policy Change
In response auDA released their own statement here.
The response attempts to shift the blame and the downplay who will be affected.
1. Shifting The Blame
To The independent Policy Advisory Panel that made the recommendations, which the auDA Board only accepted the panels recommendations.
Independent – I would not call it that at all when:
- auDA directly selected/hired the 7 panelists
- auDA promoted all the consultations
- auDA held all consultation sessions
- auDA did all the research and provided the raw numbers of domain holders that have 50 or more domain
- auDA provided their own feedback to the 10 board members after the “Independent” 7 panelists provided their recommendations, which in this case was a 4/3 for to remove section (f).
- of the 10 Board Members that voted to approve the recommendations, 6 were Hired directly by auDA and 4 were voted in.
- who voted, I am not sure of the number, but I believe it would be less than 1,000 people, that auDA have recruited to become members.
Not sure but does that sound “Independent“?
2. Down Play the Impact
“we expect most registrants will already satisfy the proposed allocation”
Trying to downplay the impact here, when the data is clear:
80% of existing registrants will be affected only 20% will not need to do anything.
You can check where your domains falls here: https://www.help.com.au/au-eligibility
2.7 million domains will need to do ONE of these things to meet the new policy:
a) If they have an existing Business Name that passes the other rules, will just need to contact their Registrar and perform a Change of Registrant
OR
b) If they do NOT have an existing Business Name that matches one of the other eligibility requirements, they will need to go to ASIC and register a new Business Name and THEN contact their Registrar and perform a Change of Registrant.
Examples of each case:
girl.com.au – Registered 25 Years Ago
Current Eligibility is under: Trillion.com Pty Ltd parent company
which happens to have a Business Name “GIRL.COM.AU“
the domain owner will need to reach out to their Registrar and pay for a Correction/Change of Registrant to maintain eligibility.
gold.com.au – Registered 29 Years Ago
Will need to go to ASIC to pay $47 per year for a new Business Name with the word “GOLD” in it to be eligible and then contact their Registrar and pay to do a Change of Registrant.
3. Corrections Are Free
auDA claims that a Correction is free, so that there will not be a cost to clients at the Registrar, technically that is true but what they don’t tell you is that in reality, Registrars will not do free corrections and for good reason and instead will use the paid for Change of Registrant pathway to make these changes.
Corrections are for mistakes and done rarely by Registrars as they require a Tech that has high level access and database access to perform changes in the database. Instead Registrars will use the common paid based Change of Registrant pathway to make these changes to the domains.
A Change of Registrant wholesale costs the Registrar $9.50
The break up of this is around
$6.00 goes to auDA
$3.50 goes to the Registry – Identity Digital
Registrars and Resellers then charge a margin anywhere from $1.00 to $60.00
auDA stands to make a nice $16.2 million windfall from this policy change 2.7 Million domains x $6.
Makes you wonder if that is a driving force for this policy change?
4. Suggested Implementation Options
auDA are in crisis talks and are considering what they need to do to limit the damage that any roll out will cause.
One option was to Grandfather all existing domains, so that they do not need to apply to the new policies and only NEW Domains registered will need to comply with the new Policies.
If you have to Grandfather existing domains, which this policy change was supposed to help free up existing domains registered but not developed, then what is the point of this policy?
Then what they do not tell you is that every year there are 720,000 new .com.au domains registered. Most of these registrants will have an existing Company Name or a Trust, unfortunately in 50% of the cases it will not be a match and they will need to go to ASIC and pay to Register a new business name to satisfy the new policy restriction. ASIC stands to make $17 MILLION every year, compounding every year! This is an EXTRA Cost to Small Business. We call this a new Stealth Tax.
Example: if a local business that trades under a family trust, which is very common, and they run a local Fish Shop called “Local Fish N Chips”, for them to register: localfishnchips.com.au they will need to go to ASIC and pay $47 per year to register a business name that has “Local Fish N Chips” the words in the business name. They can not use their existing Company name they have or their Trust as it will not be a match. Right now they can and avoid the hassle to get a new business name and save $47 every year.
5. Registrars are Not Happy Jan!
The new policy makes it harder for every auDA accredited Registrar to wish to continue to support and offer .com.au when we have over 1,000 other domain extensions we can offer.
The cost to fix all the existing domains is not something that any Registrar wants to do, or even be able to do with the staff that they have now.
And for new Registrations, why would we offer one that is so complex, complicated, has the most strict rules that no other extension in the world has, that requires us to check if the domain is still eligible before we can even renew it, and if our system checks fail or the customer forgets to renew their Business Name many years later, but keeps their Company or Trust going, that domain can not be renewed.
Some Registrars are talking about not supporting .com.au domains if this policy goes live in any form, as just too hard, or at the very least increasing the pricing to discourage clients from selecting a .com.au domain and pick something else that is easier and cheaper like a .au domain instead of a .com.au domain.
This creates unnecessary red tape style barriers and severe disruption to existing domain owners and for anyone new to registrar a .com.au domain.
We urge auDA to keep section (f) of the policy. No confusing grandfather options, if it can not be rolled out in full it just should not be implemented.
Further discussion here on linked.
