CooperMills

Archive for June, 2009

We were recently riding a tram in Melbourne when we noticed a Tourism Australia campaign entitled No Leave No Life.

Being domain lawyers, the first thing that stood out to us was the very prominent use of the of the domain name noleavenolife.com. This got us thinking, why don’ t Tourism Australia, or other many Australian businesses use the a .au domain name. One simple explanation is that one wasn’t available, but we suspect the issue is a little deeper than first thought. In our view it is one of publicity and awareness, or a lack of it.

We regularly see promotions and campaigns which use a GTLD such as .com, but what is peculiar about this new Tourism Australia campaign is that it is targeted at an internal audience (yes Australian employees and employers), yet a .com is used. Is this because of a lack of awareness ? We think that this may be the answer in many situations (although not all). The .au space does not receive enough promotion. This is more evident in light of the impending launch of new GTLD’s discussed at ICANN’s meeting in Sydney last week, where we attended with some fanfare the ‘launch for a bid’ for the .food GTLD by celebrity chef Wolfgang Puch.

For Domainers one of the most telling signs of a lack of demand in the .au domain space, are the relatively low sale prices for what would otherwise be premium domains in most other GTLDs. One only has to look at www.netfleet.com.au to see what the market is valuing names at.

We don’t recall any recent campaigns to promote the .au name space, yet that is what is needed. For example .Asia has been heavily promoted in movies and music, maybe this is what the .au space needs.

Although, the public expect that auDA has a responsibility promote the .au space, auDA’s constitution does not make specific reference to the marketing and promotion of the .au domain space. To auDA’s credit they have in the past advertised in the press and given away base ball caps, something more needs to be done so that Australian domain owners can get the full benefit of their domain space. Maybe they could start by writing to Tourism Australia.

PS. auDA may want to check out the .nz Domain Commission, whose most recent “.nz is our home” campaign is doing precisely what the .au space needs a large scale awareness program!

Tags: .au Domain Law, .au Domaining, domain law, domain lawyers, domain name lawyers, domainer, domaining
Posted in Domain law and domaining, General | No Comments »

As part of our committment to bringing you up to date developments and useful tips and tricks, we plan to have some new posts for you shortly.

If you have any topics of interest that you would like us to write about, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

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The ACMA has issued ISP, Green Tree Frog, with a remedial direction, arising out of its alleged failure to comply with directions of the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman (‘TIO’) in two separate instances.

According to ACMA Chairman, Chris Chapman:

All members of the TIO Scheme have an obligation to comply with the responsibilities established under the scheme as well as those established by the legislation that governs the industry….In issuing this direction, ACMA has undertaken the appropriate enforcement action to prevent Green Tree Frog from continuing to contravene its regulatory obligations.

The failure to comply arose out of two instances in which among other things, the TIO directed that Green Tree Frog “pay money to a customer and waive their early termination fee“.

We previously reported that another ISP had failed to comply with the TIO scheme and had been issued with a direction by the ACMA. The ACMA in line with its recently processes, has once again exercised its statutory powers to compel compliance.

Whilst the ACMA is bound to enforce the law, bigger questions about the role of the TIO and its impartiality have in the recent past been in issue. Only time will tell whether the industry will make a stand on this issue.

Tags: ACMA, isp law, ISP Lawyers, telecommunications law, Telecommunications Lawyers
Posted in ISP and Telco Law | No Comments »