Kevin Murray on Sun, 19 Mar 2000 01:39:28 +0100 (CET) |
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[Nettime-bold] The 'org.au' crisis in Australia |
This is a letter sent to Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The big difficult is finding out who is in charge of this domain registration. Is this situation with 'org.au' registration unique to Australia? 19 March 2000 Dear Editor Internet domain names are an increasingly important part of any organisation's public profile. At the moment, commercial companies can register a "com.au" name for a small fee and have it up and running within a day. For non-profit organisations, it is a different matter. Though the fee is waived, their request for a "org.au" name is sent to a volunteer and can take anything between four weeks and two years to fulfil. As you can imagine, this uncertainty and delay is a significant handicap. As the person responsible for setting up the Museums Australia (Vic) web site, I submitted a registration request in October last year. When that failed-there was no response- only alternative was to re-submit for a different domain name. We have had no response since December last year. I am now facing the same problem with another public arts organisation. In talking with other Internet Service Providers, this appears quite a common predicament for "org.au" requests. In fact, ISPs are no discouraging non-profit organisations from even attempting it, and recommending instead a "com.au" domain name. As 'org.au' the organisation presents itself as serving the interests of the broader public and its constituency. As 'com.au', is it perceived as a business pursuing its own interests and profit. Non-profit organisations include arts bodies, public galleries, and charities. They need to keep in touch with the broader community. By forcing them to register as a profit organisation, the more socially useful possibilities of the Internet are endangered. As far as I know, this situation is unique to Australia, and I'm afraid, a matter of great shame. The potential of the Internet as a community-building medium is seriously challenged by this inefficiency. The government must intervene now. __________________________________________________ Kevin Murray http://home.mira.net/~kmurray Precis Forecasts for Melbourne Issued at 0505 on Sunday the 19th of March 2000 for today and tonight Sunday Fine. Max 25 _______________________________________________ Nettime-bold mailing list Nettime-bold@nettime.org http://www.nettime.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nettime-bold