The Internet Commerce Association (the “ICA”) Congratulates Australian Domain Investors on the rejection of certain Proposed Policy Changes in the Australian namespace which would have had a detrimental effect on domain name investors and on the Australian namespace.
On April 15, 2018, auDA management responded to the Policy Review Panel’s Final Report and Recommendations (the “PRP”). The ICA had submitted a detailed response to the Final Report (“the ICA Comment”) and auDA Management has clearly taken it to heart. As pointed out in the ICA Comment, and as concluded by auDA Management, “there is no evidence that domain name flipping as an investment strategy is having a negative impact on the utility of the .au domain nor resulting in a scarcity of domain names” and that “the PRP has not provided any evidentiary material on which to assess the nature of the warehousing problem and what, if any, action is required”.
Moreover, auDA Management rightly concluded that, “the warehousing prohibition appears to disproportionately target domain investors as the licence portfolios or holdings of trademark and brand owners will be excluded under the PRP proposal. This proposal elevates the rights of trademark and other intellectual property owners over other licence holders in the .au domain, which may give rise to issues of market power and anti-competitive practices.”
auDA management accordingly, “DOES NOT SUPPORT THE PRP RECOMMENDATION FOR A RESALE AND WAREHOUSING PROHIBITION”.
Moreover, auDA Management has “abolished” the domain monetisation rule for the com.au and net.au namespaces: “A Person….will be able to use [their domain name] for any legitimate purpose, including domain name monetisation or domain name investment. This is consistent with the approach in other ccTLDs, including .ca, .nz, .fr, .uk and .de domains.”
The ICA is very pleased that auDA Management has gotten these crucial issues right and that it has resisted unsubstantiated and ill-conceived attempts to prohibit domain name investing and monetisation in the .au namespace. The ICA believes that the rejection of these proposed policies will ensure the continued viability and success of the .au namespace and expresses its appreciation for auDA management’s clear rejection of these wrongheaded policy proposals which would have dramatically affected domain name investment in Australia.