.nz news & views

	Sunday, 30 March 2003

Management buy out of Domainz revealed David Farrar has posted that a number of staff and directors of Domainz are proposing to make an offer to purchase the company. The interesting side of this is the CEO and the Chair are both on the Domainz Future Taskforce (aka the Selling Domainz Taskforce). The Taskforce has recently completed a valuation, which the members of the taskforce have had complete review of. I trust now that all documents that the taskforce members have seen todate will be released to any bidders. If not it makes a mockery of the process, as the CEO and Chair have been privy to key documents. Another issue is the CEO, Chair and another director planning to make an offer are still in the 'day to day' of the company. Now, I would have thought it was prudent that the two directors resign (or at least alternative are appointed), as almost EVERYTHING the company does, for good or bad, will impact the sale price. 10:26:50 PM      Like to comment? []

	Thursday, 27 March 2003

2LD WG Terms of Reference The terms of reference for the 2LD Review WG has been issued. It is rather sparse but it basicly means that we have allowed our selves full range to look at all issues. Also a list has been created that will be used for discussion. To subscribe to the list please go to http://listserver.internetnz.net.nz/mailman/listinfo/nz-discuss. For those that may not be aware I am one of the members of this WG. 5:35:37 PM      Like to comment? []

	Wednesday, 26 March 2003

SpamCop blocks InternetNZ IDG has a story on InternetNZ getting flagged by SpamCop as a spammer today. This is due to the major one time mail out to many registrants about the 'SRS and the trip to Fiji if you pick a registrar that could be Domainz'. The funny thing is, if email bounced the main reason would be incorrect whois details. Incorrect whois details breaches .nz policy. Remember Helengrad? 5:36:59 PM      Like to comment? []

Registrar updated The .nz authorised registrar list is being updated nearly daily at the moment. This is mainly due to the DNC mail out with the prize of a trip to Fiji. Several companies have connected in the last few days as well as several are offering 'transfer' specials. Check out the list to see the major variety in domain name costs, from $31.44 to $184 for annual domain name charges. I am thinking of adding an option to allow people to be notified via email of changes to this page. 5:30:59 PM      Like to comment? []

	Tuesday, 25 March 2003

All .nz registrars in breach of registrar agreement While reviewing the registrar agreement for the market share sections I discovered a very interesting clause of the agreement. After reading this clause I reviewed the websites of all the authorised registrars that have connected to the SRS. They ALL appear to be in breach of this clause. Even the registrar that is owned by the current InternetNZ President and NZOC member. The clause is: “6.18 inform registrants about the existence of InternetNZ and its activities;” Now this may not seem like a major requirement but this clause was the result of some quite major debate. Some people wanted an email message to be sent to all registrants by InternetNZ and/or the registry to tell them of their rights and the activities of InternetNZ in general. Many rightly said that no way this should happen and that no one should email a registrant without a ‘damn good reason’ and especially not the actual registry. The compromise was that the registrar should have information on InternetNZ on their website that can be read, before, during, or after the registration process. The wording of the clause was general enough not to force a certain approach or to even state a type of application due to the ever changing nature of the Internet. This would also allow the registrar to use their own wording and branding to support this clause. While this does not appear to be a huge clause the point is not a single registrar is in compliance with their registrar agreement. What else are they trying to avoid complying with? Another issue is that a number of registrars do not even have a link to the DNC website and none have information on the registrant/registrar complaints process. 11:32:15 PM      Like to comment? []

Registrar market figures I was reviewing the Registrar Authorisation Agreement yesterday to see what was said, if anything, on the DNC releasing stats on registrar market share. Well, based on the agreement all companies sign to apply to be a registrar it allows the DNC and the registry to share almost any information on market share figures with anyone (section 14). Not a thing a registrar can do about it. Funny enough the stabilising contract that Domainz signed does not have a similar clause. However, would could publish all the market share figures for all other registrars and then leave it up to the reader to work out the difference from the total .nz names. 10:46:22 PM      Like to comment? []

geek.nz submission period abotu to begin I notice the DNC beat me to reminding people that the submission stage of the geek.nz application begins tomorrow (March 26th). The submisison requirements are the same for .maori.nz, that it be 'signed' and address details to be provied but will not be published. 9:58:29 PM      Like to comment? []

	Monday, 24 March 2003

Trip to Fiji Whoops, just found the area on the DNC site about the email to registrants. Silly me, I was looking under 'Latest News' but of course it is under 'Authorised Registrars'. The mail out was to all registrants that had names with Domainz at March 1st. Seems if you had a name with Domainz and you were direct billed by a .nz name provider that has become a Registrar you will be out of luck. You dont get a chance to win the trip. One lucky registrant will win a trip for 2 to Fiji... I just checked the fine print... yes.. it is a return trip :-). 3:44:09 PM      Like to comment? []

.nz dispute survey online The DNC has placed online the .nz disputes questionnaire. It has some interesting questions but I do tend to think that the format and wording brings out the worst of the subject matter. It will gather data on some of the extreme disputes that have occurred in the past. But as it states at the bottom of the introduction page this is by no means qualitative or quantitative. 3:14:10 PM      Like to comment? []

Domainz comments on DNC mail out Domainz has a message on its website about the recent DNC mail out to registrants. This is to try and stem any transfers that the mail out will lead to. The DNC website has nothing on the mail out yet. 3:00:06 PM      Like to comment? []

	Friday, 21 March 2003

IDG on the competitive nature of the SRS IDG has an article today about the competitive nature of the SRS. I spoke to Paul the other day for research for this story. I did not expect that my comments would be most of the story. The issue about govt.nz would be solved if they became a 'closed' registrar. In the short term they have to enter into a process where a registrar ensures applications for .govt.nz domain names are not submitted to the NZRS without the moderators approval. Domainz currently has that process using email alerts and approval steps. 9:45:55 AM      Like to comment? []

	Thursday, 20 March 2003

Self selected disputes survey The .nz newsletter had this comment in it: "A questionnaire has been devised on Domain Name Disputes to get feedback on the extent of any problem regarding domain name disputes. This has been sent out to legal groups and will also be placed on the DNC website." Sending this out to 'legal groups' is a bit like asking someone that has just been attacked on the street if they think more police should be hired. It is in this groups own interest to have a non court dispute process so they can avoid the pesky, yet normally fair, court process. In favour of some 'outside the law' forced arbitration every time they think their clients rights exceed someone else's (which is 100% of the time in my opinion). 9:33:29 PM      Like to comment? []

From the mind boggles department... From the Mind Boggles Department. I am amazed at how many searches like this one result in this site being listed. The thing is that several different search sites rate .nz news & views very high for TV 3 searches. The only thing I can think of is one of the early posts for this site was about the Nightline story about Helengrad. 4:15:42 PM      Like to comment? []

Computerworld on whois outage Computerworld has an article on the whois outage that happened last month. This was documented in the .nz newsletter. It lasted only 10 minutes was in the wee hours of the morning. 4:07:18 PM      Like to comment? []

	Wednesday, 19 March 2003

.nz stands at 122,885 active names The DNC has released the March newsletter. It states that .nz now has 122,885 'active' names as of the end of February. Looking at the stats a huge number of names were renewed last month, over 20% of the total .nz names which is over two and a half times the monthly 'average'. Looking at the numbers it looks like December and January are down by about the same amount that February is up. 11:34:29 PM      Like to comment? []

.nz registrar list updated Just completed a major update to the registrar list. Several registrars have connected as well as been approved by the DNC in the last week. 11:18:37 PM      Like to comment? []

	Tuesday, 18 March 2003

Opinion bit on geek.nz Paul Brislen in his IDG Friday Fryup has an interesting outline of the InternetNZ 2LD creation process. I do like the song and dance bit... you hum it and I will sing the words! :-) 10:20:35 AM      Like to comment? []

.geek.nz submission process to start March 26th IDG has an article today on the submission process being announced on the .geek.nz 2LD application. It states it is starting on March 26th and ending April 29th. The weird thing is I cannot find this announcement on the DNC website and nor any email message out about it. 10:09:57 AM      Like to comment? []

	Monday, 17 March 2003

ICANN makes this stuff up right? ICANN has released its preliminary budget. Under Appendix 2 is has a list of ccTLD's and the numbers they think they have. This is always fun reading as they currently think .nz has144,251 names as of February 1st. Now, on January 31st .nz had 122,668 names. I wonder if ICANN even asked .nz the actual number or even tried to Google for them. I also think that you could do a very strong case to state that .nz only has less than 20 names. This is because at the 2nd level this is all that exist. But it does not really matter as .nz has never signed an agreement to pay ICANN anything so ICANN can ask until they are blue in the face... it wont make much difference. 10:57:22 AM      Like to comment? []

	Thursday, 13 March 2003

.nz survey I have quickly created a survey to for those that want to complete it to see how many people have moved away from Domainz. This is of course a self selected survey but it might be interesting anyway. 11:51:55 PM      Like to comment? []

Domainz market share? I sat down this evening and decided to try and figure out the current market share that Domainz might have. Several things are known: At SRS go live Domainz lost about 5% market share (6,000 names). Freeparking, iSERVE, and others have become registrars and used direct billing as .nz name providers. XTRA have gone live and are about to move all their names over. Total names at end of January were 121,688. Lets assume that: All registrars connecting the day after the SRS went live until end of February had 10,000 names. XTRA has 10,000 names to be moved over. This means that Domainz has lost, or about to lose, 26,000 names or 21%. 11:51:18 PM      Like to comment? []

	Tuesday, 11 March 2003

RegisterDirect selling expired names? RegisterDirect has a list of 'expired' names online. The homepage says it was updated Feb 18th, the actual page says Jan 18th. Yet I randomly selected 3 names and 2 of them already exist and do not appear to have been registered since either of those two dates. The list is misleading at best and if it can not be kept up to date it should be removed. 11:59:14 PM      Like to comment? []

IDG on .geek.nz IDG has an article on the geek.nz vote. The one interesting thing is that it stated the applicant (Dean Pemberton) live in Wellington. He has been living in Sydney for the last few years, which is ironic having a .nz 2LD applicant coming from an Australian resident. 8:18:43 AM      Like to comment? []

	Monday, 10 March 2003

InternetNZ council meeting minutes I noticed today that the InternetNZ council meeting minutes are online. They appear to have been posted on February 24th. I guess no one bothered to tell the members about them going online... For a hoot to read the part about Joop Teernstra getting paid $1,000 US for doing webmaster work for icannatlarge.com. This is the same site that was hacked at least twice and has been all but ignored by everyone. This is also based on the fact that the icannatlarge.com steering committee was asked if the $1,000 US donation should go to Joop's company and them never agreeing to this. 10:42:23 PM      Like to comment? []

InternetNZ IP address allocation The issue of IP address blocks has been a bit of an issue in the past for .nz. Looking at InternetNZ minutes of the September 4 2002 Transfer of IP address block from Domainz to InternetNZ emergency meeting it records that the address block should be moved from Domainz to InternetNZ (on behalf of NZRS). Looking at APNIC both Domainz and InternetNZ are 'small' members. The term small is misleading as Unisys NZ and Vodafone are 'very small' members. I am curious about why both are members let alone that they the size range they are. Now, the reason for this commentary is that all is not well in the block allocation. Something is going on with the InternetNZ/NZRS /20 IP address range (which is 16 class C's using the old class terms). What is going on I am not sure what it seems that it is going back to Domainz. So the question is if Domainz is a member of APNIC why does an existing /20 need to be moved to them from InternetNZ and/or NZRS? 10:29:00 PM      Like to comment? []

Changes proposed to registrar list I will be dumping the current javascript based registrar list table. This is because to fiz the sorting issue will take a major kludge to fix. Also in Opera the sort does not work (but looks nice) and in Mozilla is looks like utter crap. I will move to a 'plain' table in the next day or so and then move to a server based system in due course. 10:28:06 AM      Like to comment? []

	Saturday, 8 March 2003

NZOC meeting agenda NZOC announced (via a 19 Kb MS Word file) the following agenda for the up coming meeting on March 14th at 3pm. Agenda Minutes of the last meeting DNC report Registrar Advisory Group (RAG) Process on De-authorisation of a registrar SLA with NZRS DNC as Registrar Email out to registrants Update on reviews Annual report General business Next meeting Things are looking up. This is the first time in the last 2 or 3 meetings that the NZOC has even bothered to follow their own policy of only telling InternetNZ members about the meetings. 11:35:24 AM      Like to comment? []

	Friday, 7 March 2003

Registrar application declined by DNC After having to go to the InternetNZ website to look up the section of the constitution about formats of emails to members (for those wondering it is ASCII only text) I happened to reread the NZOC report for January. One thing I had missed is that a registrar application has been declined by the DNC for "...due to the business model of the business being considered contrary to .nz policy in respect of the registration of domains in the name of the business." Did the company even bother to read the .nz polices before wasting their $2,500 on the application fee? 11:07:37 PM      Like to comment? []

.geek.nz passes with 89.77% support The geek.nz straw vote has been announced. As most people expected it passed the hurdle with flying colours. A total of 1065 valid votes were received: 956 in favour (89.77%) 103 opposed (9.67%) 6 abstained  (0.56%) The interesting thing is this was well under the total votes for .maori.nz with 1,623 which had 91.7% support. This leads me to think that perhaps New Zealand has less geeks than Maori people :-) 9:37:54 PM      Like to comment? []

New zone file push times NZRS has announced the new zone file update times. Effective March 31st will now occur at: 05:00 09:00 12:00 15:00 18:00 22:00 5:18:19 PM      Like to comment? []

The Reg on ITU Workshop The Register has an interesting article on the ITU ccTLD workshop. The only story I have seen so far on the 2 day session. 5:15:20 PM      Like to comment? []

	Thursday, 6 March 2003

NZRS to announce zone push details NZRS should be announcing tomorrow the outcome of the zone push review. I would expect that this would go to 4 or 6 a day compared to the current 2 per day. 11:27:24 PM      Like to comment? []

	Wednesday, 5 March 2003

geek.nz results soon The results of the geek.nz vote should be released in the next few days. The biggest thing I am wondering is did the voter turn out exceed that of .maori.nz? 11:14:51 PM      Like to comment? []

	Tuesday, 4 March 2003

Domainz emails other registrars clients Thanks to a tipoff from a reader I was told to 'check out iSERVE's latest newsletter... you will find it interesting'.  The newsletter that was released in the last few days has an interesting 'late breaking news' section. According to iSERVE they state the following: "It was brought to our attention earlier today that an e-mail has been sent by Domainz to some of their previous clients who previously had their Domain Name under the Domainz Registrar. The e-mail states that your Domain Name is at risk of cancellation if you do not pay an outstanding amount to them by the 24th March, and provides a link for you to click on to make a credit card payment." This is a HUGE breach of the .nz policies for two reasons: Registrars shall NEVER email other registrars clients You can not cancel a domain name with a different registrar Do Domainz even understand they do not have the registry anymore? Do Domainz understand they can't do whatever the hell they want like they used too? I wonder if Domainz was the registrar that was refusing to release UDAI's without payment being settled first that was mentioned in the last DNC newsletter. 4:04:38 PM      Like to comment? []