auDA seeks comment on 'monetisation' of .au domains

Stuart Corner
Thursday, 23 March 2006 16:01

IT Policy - Regulation

The Australian domain name regulator, au Domain Administration (auDA), has released an issues paper seeking comment on whether it should issue .au domain names to organisations whose sole aim is to raise advertising revenue from people accessing those domains, and not to provide any meaningful content.

The practice is known as 'domain monetisation' and entails the registration of large numbers of domain names for the primary purpose of capturing as much web traffic as possible so as to maximise advertising revenue.

auDA policy is that it will only issue .au domain name to an organisation that can show a "close and substantial connection" with the name being issue. auDA CEO, Chris Disspain, said: "It has come to our attention that some registrants of .au domain names have been using the 'close and substantial connection' rule to register large numbers of domain names apparently for the primary purpose of domain monetisation.

 "While we are not opposed to domain monetisation per se, we would like to know whether the Internet using public would like this practice to take place under the .au domain name system."

Disspain added: "The practice is becoming particularly common amongst registrants of .com and .net domain names. This is because, unlike .au domain names, there are no policy rules limiting the number and type of .com and .net domain names a single registrant can register."

The issues paper questions whether it should be acceptable under the 'close and substantial connection' rule to register domain names for the primary purpose of domain monetisation. It is available here.  Comments are required by Friday April 21.