australian domain name registrar

auDA won’t give new Registrar a fair go.

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

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Cam

Hey Anthony, it’s been a long time, hope you’re doing well.

Most of those things are not correct, very quickly:

  1. Per the agreement, auDA can waive the reseller requirement.  Persons with nearly 20 years domain and registrar experience seem to be the most obvious reason.  Besides that, I also acquired a reseller that has existed for years, yet auDA decided with no justification that it wasn’t good enough, so I’m not using that Reseller anymore.
  2. There is no ISO certification requirement for new Registrars. Per the agreement, it’s just one option. Further, not even all the current Registrars are ISO certified, so trying to insist on it for new Registrars is an unfair barrier to entry.
  3. GST registration is a final tick and flick, it presents no issue for me.

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.

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Nobby

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.

Test 2 is to be registered for GST… https://abr.business.gov.au/ABN/View?abn=30648793382 here everyone can see they are not.

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?

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