.nz news & views

	Thursday, 29 August 2002

geek.nz 2LD application submitted Dean Pemberton last night submitted an application to InternetNZ for geek.nz. The opening paragraph of the application is: "New Zealand is a country striving to become one of the technological elite.  It does, however, suffer from a problem which sees some of it's brightest people leaving its shores.  Geeks do not feel that they are taken seriously in New Zealand, allowances should be made to accommodate them." The applicant requests that the RFD process begin 'right away' and has no issue at being run at same time as .bank.nz process. Note: I, among others, did QA the draft proposal for Dean and suggested changes which were included in the final version submitted. 9:38:32 AM      Like to comment? []

Wait list for .uk announced On Sunday I wrote about the WLS service and the impact it would have on ccTLD's. Well, it seems a company has launched a "wait list" service for .uk called NameTrack. This is registrar level and they do have this comment at the end of the announcement: "There is little likelihood that Nominet, who control .uk, will introduce a similar scheme at the registry level. NameTrack are therefore set to remain the .uk wait list provider of choice for the foreseeable future." Maybe they plan to sell the technology to Nominet :-) 9:01:53 AM      Like to comment? []

IDGNet 2LD story IDGNet has another story about the 2LD space again today. 8:49:15 AM      Like to comment? []

	Wednesday, 28 August 2002

.bank.nz IDG story IDGNet have a story on the .bank.nz application as well as InternetNZ has issued a press release. I would link the the later but it does not seem to be on their website. I did manage to find the first annoucement of the RFD process and dates on the site. 1:03:55 PM      Like to comment? []

	Tuesday, 27 August 2002

maori.nz moving toward going live Looks like Domainz has started to work on .maori.nz, the newly approved 2LD. It appears that the soa and ns records have already been added to the zonefile for it. 9:25:12 PM      Like to comment? []

Major public debate on .nz 2LD policy A rather heated discussion is occurring at the moment on the NZOG list about the .bank.nz application. Much of it is negative to InternetNZ, NZBA and 2LD's in general. This is just the latest debate about the 2LD policy for .nz. about 9 months ago this was again debated and resulted in me being asked to write a terms of reference for a possible working group. This was passed to the NZOC for review and has failed to even get onto the agenda. Guess they think a subject that has results in 100+ posts over 24 hours on one list alone can be put on the back burner. Talking about not making your agenda public has a higher urgency than 2LD policy. 7:37:06 PM      Like to comment? []

	Monday, 26 August 2002

.bank.nz 2LD process started The RFD (Request for Discussion) has finally been issued for the .bank.nz 2LD application.  This application is dated May 3rd, over 100 days ago. A mail list has been set up for discussion on this application. Background and creation policy is available at the InternetNZ website. 6:53:39 PM      Like to comment? []

Zone file analysis confirms number of names Mark Davies has up dated his zone file analysis. The results he has for names as of August 1st is 112,054. This is only a few names less than the the Domainz number of 112,137. Diference is likely due to the small difference in time between the two stats more than anything. I do note with interest that Marks stats already have a column for the maori 2LD (from source or did Mark add?) 2:30:26 PM      Like to comment? []

	Sunday, 25 August 2002

.nz Oversight Comittee Meeting Minutes Minutes of the second NZOC meeting were placed online this week. Interesting look at the thinking of the members in it. Nothing major but some interesting hints at launch date issues. Couple of obvious things that I spotted as 'curious' are: "The agenda for NZOC meetings will be posted to the Members list. It will not be published on the web site." "...transfer the international responsibility, and budget, back to the International Affairs Committee for this financial year..." Making the Agenda only on InternetNZ's members (list of less than 200 people) means that they planning to reduce public input as much as possible (ICANN anyone?) and moving the planning and the actual $87,500 budget back to NZOC is weird. This cost is so much part of DNC and IAC it is not funny. This line item was called 'ICANN Travel' for a reason. 12:46:24 AM      Like to comment? []

WLS: Coming to a ccTLD near you? ICANN has approved the Verisign WLS proposal. I have made some comments in public against this with this being the lastest. WLS solely applies to the gTLD space (in fact just the .com and .net space really) and has no direct impact on ccTLD's registries. However, is this a wave of the future? Will .uk and .de the 'big guns' of the ccTLD space move in a similar direction? How will the average name holder react to WLS, will it lead to the concept being introduced in ccTLD's? 12:24:33 AM      Like to comment? []

	Thursday, 22 August 2002

auDA responds to ING collapse auDA has reported that ING has been placed in administration. They have prepared and an excellent outline for anyone that used ING to register an .au name. Something similar for .nz would be good other than 'we can help' words from the CEO of Domainz. Perhaps the DNC should pick up this issue and run with it? 9:34:54 AM      Like to comment? []

Domain Name Registry of <insert country here> has arrived in NZ. Domain Name Registry of <insert country here> has arrived in NZ. Seems that Domain Name Registry of Australia has started to fax New Zealand .com name holders with slamming type faxes. Check out the story on IDGnet. 9:08:05 AM      Like to comment? []

	Wednesday, 21 August 2002

Domainz to 'help' ING customers It has been a slow few days. Domainz has a story on IDGnet about the demise of ING and how they will "... will protect local companies who have registered .nz domain names through the now seemingly defunct Internet Name Group (ING)...". I also guess Derek Locke (CEO) thinks domain names are only used for website based on this quote "We'll try to make sure .nz customers are looked after and their websites keep going if it's at all possible." 9:38:44 AM      Like to comment? []

	Thursday, 15 August 2002

Response to DPF's GAC funding post David Farrar posted on the DNSO GA list about InternetNZ's funding of NZ's GAC rep to ICANN. He said "This isn't quite the case.  A suggestion has been made by one or two people that this could be considered." The minutes differ from what David said. The funding of the GAC rep was a recommendation of IAC (International Affairs Committee) to InternetNZ council. IAC also has half a dozen members and its Chair is Peter Dengate-Thrush. I can't recall a single time in the last 2 years that a recommendation from this committee on who should be funded to attend ICANN meetings has been over ruled. 10:31:56 AM      Like to comment? []

	Tuesday, 13 August 2002

ICANN responds to InternetNZ 'donation'. More hidden treasure! Buried in the minutes is a link to the reply from ICANN about the ICANN donation money InternetNZ put into escrow. It makes an interesting read. The part I like the best is "To put it another way, there are no circumstances now or in the future under which ICANN would accept funds tied to specific policy outcomes. Policy development is a community process." 12:06:41 AM      Like to comment? []

InternetNZ to fund GAC rep? Under the heading of Government Advisory Committee (GAC) to ICANN in the minutes it seems that InternetNZ is to fund the cost of New Zealand's GAC rep to go to the ICANN meeting in China. Now, this is getting tad complex as the GAC rep is Frank March who is also the NZOC Chair. I hope Frank is taking a large suitcase to fit all those hats in! PS I am so glad that domain name fee's are going to fund a goverment rep to this meeting... guess it is like a tax after all :-) 12:02:09 AM      Like to comment? []

	Monday, 12 August 2002

NZOC Chair says one thing and does another... Reading the InternetNZ minutes I see a comment that Frank March, chair of the NZOC said "He noted that the NZOC expected the DNC to perform to Budget, and that this would not be possible if the Society were to interfere in that expenditure." I find this curious as he was present at the AGM and the minutes show I was the only one to vote against the motion 02/90 he is referring too. 11:56:28 PM      Like to comment? []

Domainz staff makes amusing post to NZNOG Tim John, the IT Manager of Domainz made and interesting post to NZNOG this morning. Lets just list some of his more interesting comments: "Thank you for those words of reason; they are like a ray of light through the shadows." "We are paying for the registry part of the existing system to be rebuilt and separated from us" "... we are under the constant threat from our shareholders who are considering closing Domainz down. " OK, I guess that to Tim an interesting ongoing discussion over Domainz's name servers, that he started, is a Bad Thing™. He claims Domainz is paying for the Registry. This is half correct. Domainz, at their own request, (in fact demand would be better) paid for the Technical Manager contract as well as the start of the development costs. The Chair of Domainz even accused people of wasting money as Domainz could use 'pre tax dollars' for this and not post tax if InternetNZ paid. Of course Domainz is in the process of charging NZRS for all work todate on non registrar costs (actually Domainz might be having some registrar related costs paid for within SRS). Last but not least InternetNZ passed a motion quite some time ago that InternetNZ would NOT own a registrar in a competitive environment and in the medium to long term would dispose of Domainz. This is like the Office of the Privacy Commissioner running its own direct mail marketing company! It is even up to the Domainz board to come up with a business plan on life post SRS for Domainz. I guess the Board of Domainz has failed to inform their staff about the intent of its shareholder? 11:31:13 PM      Like to comment? []

	Thursday, 8 August 2002

Domainz CEO paid tidy sum Talking of Domainz and money... Domainz in the past has been, shall we say, evasive, on issues relating to the compensation of the CEO of the company. This dates back many years but it looks like the current board has done The Right Thing™ and actually reported on what employees earn over $100,000. It states one employee that during the year made between $120,000 and $130,000. Now, one assumes this is the CEO. The interesting thing about this is the current CEO only started on (or about) August 1st, so he was only employeed for 8 months of the financial year. Lets assume the CEO earned in the middle of the range ($125,000). This would make his estimated annualised earnings for being CEO of Domainz at $187,500. Not bad for a company with no sales people and a staff of 15 or so of which most are admin/call centre type staff. Perhaps now we know why previous boards have been secretive on this issue? 11:05:05 PM      Like to comment? []

Domain allocation legal advice released Legal Advice issued. The legal advice I mentioned yesterday has been released tonight along with a draft overview of what it means. 10:45:26 PM      Like to comment? []

	Wednesday, 7 August 2002

Domainz pays $1 million dividend Domainz ponies up a million. It would seem that once Domainz signed the Stabilising Registrar agreement it was the last part of them agreeing to pay InternetNZ the reminder of the $1.5 million dividend request. Domainz had already paid a dividend at their AGM of $500,000 and it seems the rest changed hands in the last few days. In turn it seems that most of this money then went to the NZRS to fund the SRS dev costs plus other startup costs. 11:41:34 PM      Like to comment? []

July growth slows Monthly growth. I noted the total names that Domainz thought existed in .nz at 9:15am on August 1st. I compared it to figures that were based on the zone file on July 1st (thanks Mark!). Now, comparing these numbers (which is not apples to apples but no matter) shows an increase of 481 names for the month to a total of 112,137. Now, this increase is down from the 1% monthy growth we have been seeing but just under .5% growth is still nothing to laugh at. When the independant figures get updated I will let you all know as I would rather use these numbers and not ones based on the DRS 11:13:21 PM      Like to comment? []

News Flash: Legal advice on domain name allcoation for the SRS due out tomorrow News Flash. Thanks to a little bit of digging I found out that DNC/InternetNZ will be making public legal advice they have received over how domain name allocation under the SRS. This advice is from Andrew Brown dated June 18th, 2002. 3:56:22 PM      Like to comment? []

Stabilising Registrar agreement signed. This tripartite agreement was signed by InternetNZ, Domainz, and NZRS over the last few days. It is a key document as this is what allows NZRS to take over the registry from Domainz and continue Domainz as the transitional registrar under the SRS. 3:29:36 PM      Like to comment? []

.bank.nz II. Back in May InternetNZ received a second 2LD application from the NZ Bankers' Association. It seems this application has finally been acted on by InternetNZ (via the NZOC) and will enter RFD status 'real soon now'. As the approval process takes time we could have another 2LD be approved early in 2003. 11:58:34 AM      Like to comment? []

	Tuesday, 6 August 2002

SoYouWannaBuyAnExpiredDomainName.net (.com was taken). Came across this Salon story and it was a nice start to my day. 10:34:04 AM      Like to comment? []

	Monday, 5 August 2002

.nz oversight committee. This group meets today at 4pm for the second time. I would link to the agenda but I can not find it on the DNC or InternetNZ website anywhere. 3:28:35 PM      Like to comment? []

NZRS Office Opening. Last Wednesday (July 31) was the ‘official’ opening of the NZRS offices (formerly called NZDNRL). Seems was a good turn out (30-40 people) and some say that the alcohol consumption was high… 3:25:27 PM      Like to comment? []

	Friday, 2 August 2002

The SRS Client Application Design document was released at the same time as the SRS Detailed Requirements Specification. Nice disclaimer on this document as well :-) 3:20:39 PM      Like to comment? []

Last night the latest SRS Detailed Requirements Specification was published. This document defines, at a functional level, the business activities that are encompassed by the system and the rules that apply to them. This, depending on your view point, is a key document and should be read ASAP or should be read at night to help you get to sleep :-) 10:53:21 AM      Like to comment? []

	Thursday, 1 August 2002

auDRP launched. Today is the first day of the new auDRP process that auDA has been working on for the last 18 months. It is based on the gTLD UDRP but is different in two main areas: to take account of the policy rules that apply to .au domain names, that do not apply to gTLD domain names; and to address practical constraints that have become apparent since arbitrations under the UDRP began in 1999. I was curious if it was mandatory and found this little nugget: "Please note that existing domain name licences will be 'grandfathered'. This means that registrants who licensed their domain name before introduction of the auDRP will not have to submit to a proceeding under the auDRP, unless they choose to 'sign on' to the auDRP. However, upon renewing their domain name, registrants will be required to 'sign on'to the auDRP as part of their domain name licence agreement." 2:31:43 PM      Like to comment? []