There’s a new domain name aftermarket and blog website called Profit.com.au (run by a very experienced domain industry veteran) that is also bringing to light the fact that auDA have not allowed a new Registrar to come into existence in over 6 years.
Assets Australia recently reported that auDA (.au Domain Administration) and it’s current CEO Rosemary Sinclair, COO Bruce Tonkin and Licensing Framework and Compliance Manager Steph Viljoen and Registrar Liaison Manager Daniel Young are seemingly stalling a new domain name Registrar from being approved for reasons unknown.
Cam Bell recently launched his first version of an Australian domain name Drop Catcher and Domain Aftermarket over at DropCatcher.com.au, but he has only been able to launch it as a “reseller” of another auDA accredited Registrar. Try as he may, Mr Bell has been jumping through auDA’s “Registrar Application Process” for around 16 months. There’s currently only one single Registrar acting as a daily domain name drop catcher with no competition and Mr Bell is hoping to change this.
Today, Mr Bell emailed an open letter to The Hon Paul Fletcher and auDA, asking for a “fair go” at granting him conditional approval to run an Australian domain name Registrar himself, with over 17 years of domain name industry experience.
In his letter (published below), Cam states, “I have invested thousands of dollars in this project myself, and so has a (now disgruntled) investor who I managed to talk into believing in me, yet I continue to lose more money keeping my servers and contractors afloat while waiting on auDA to grant my approval.”
auDA are already clearly aware of the success of Adrian Kinderis in the past, and gave him and his AusRegistry company a “fair go” when they allowed Mr Kinderis and AusRegistry to run the Australian domain Registry for over 16 years.
In 2009, Mr Kinderis was asked how much money he started AusRegistry with?
He replied, “We got a seed investor. Back then it was tens of thousands of dollars, but we thought it was millions, as you do when you’re first starting out. It was a couple of years before we took a salary out of the company and did nothing but pour every cent that we had into getting where we were.”
auDA gave AusRegistry the chance to run the entire Australian domain name Registry for over 16 years. And it turns out AusRegistry did a great job and many domain investors miss them running the Registry. Yet somehow today, and for 16 months so far and counting, the commanders at auDA seem very reluctant to give a new Registrar a fair go or a chance to succeed. And it also appears the auDA Board Members aren’t aware of any of this happening as there is no mention of Mr Bell’s application in any of their board minutes?
Below is a copy of Mr Bell’s email to Minister Paul Fletcher and auDA.
We have reached out to auDA’s CEO, COO, Compliance Manager and Registrar Liaison Manager for comment.
auDA-Open-Letter
This is happening on Linked In at the moment…
My response to the Linked In post is:
If this is correct (i doubt it and look forward to Cam’s response), then why wouldn’t auDA have explained this in such clear language to Cam, every few weeks over the past 12 months, instead of leaving him in the dark?
We all have to ask ourselves why auDA would do this and let it drag on and not bother to tell someone these important points (if correct) for this amount of time?
Anyway, looking forward to Cam’s response on this.
Anthony, you ran a competitor drop catcher called Domain Shield a few years ago, until it was bought by the current company you work for. You would think you would feel compassion for another guy having a go at launching a Registrar and drop catcher in this industry?
Scared of the competition maybe?
It looks like Anthony and his team currently control about 20% of all the Australian Domain Registrars (7/34 Registrars?)
Why aren’t auDA helping a new willing competitor come into the market?
Ned’s “fair go” slogan at this point rings true.
Hey Anthony, it’s been a long time, hope you’re doing well.
Most of those things are not correct, very quickly:
That said, it’s good to hear from you and I can understand why you’d want to avoid competition. By my count, your employer directly or indirectly owns 7 of the 35 current Registrars. That’s 20% of the entire pool. I think this kind of overrepresentation needs correction in general, but all I want is a fair go to participate with just one.
It is astounding that Anthony Peake is preaching the rules that an auDA accredited registrar has to comply with in defence of auDA. Making statements like the following only brings attention to how auDA operates in this industry.
Drop.com.au Pty Ltd was not registered for GST for a period of 3 years between 2017 and 2021 contrary to the registrar agreement even though auDA were aware of this.
https://abr.business.gov.au/AbnHistory/View?id=79135424878
Domain Shield also managed by Anthony Peake was also not registered for GST for 3 years.
https://abr.business.gov.au/AbnHistory/View?id=74153994506
Domain Central Australia Pty Ltd remains an auDA accredited registrar even though the company was deregistered in 2019.
Link to ASIC
The list goes on.
Does self regulation work?
Interesting.
WOW – “Domain Central Australia Pty Ltd remains an auDA accredited registrar even though the company was deregistered in 2019″
My Linked In lurkers today are very interesting.