From: kre@cs.mu.oz.au (Robert Elz)
Subject: Re: mail to "brisnet.org.au" problem
Organization: Computer Science, University of Melbourne, Australia
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1992 07:48:17 GMT

In <ggm.714811073@brolga> ggm@brolga.cc.uq.oz.au (George Michaelson) writes:

| kre is not completely correct in writing off brisnet as a bunch of home
| addresses. they have applied to the qld courts to register as a not-for-profit
| organization and will be a legal entity, capable of entering into binding
| contracts. 

OK, in that case, brisnet.org.au will be OK - for the organisation
itself.

| I think that if somebody claims to be an outfit, pays money to become legally
| known as that outfit, and fronts to buy an MX, then once Geoff/Peter accept
| it, surely we can't refuse at that point to give them an MX?

Regardless of what Geoff said, this is 100% wrong.   Please get it
clear, no-one buys an MX.  What you (they) pay for is the right to use
AARNet (different amounts of $'s give different kinds of rights).

MX's are free - the only caveats are that if the MX would imply
use of AARNet, and the organisation does not have permission to
use AARNet, then the MX won't be installed (its this that sometimes
makes it appear that its possible to pay for a MX record), and
second that they have properly applied for the name they want the
MX to be for.

Note that the second is important - the right to use AARNet does
not imply the right to use any name that you might dream up.
Eg: if some small company, or individual, wanted to be "pm.gov.au",
or "uniqld.edu.au" they'd almost certainly be told to go pick another...

Similarly, while registering in oz.au is trivially easy, you just
have to make your node visible on ACSnet - you do have to do that,
if you're not visible, then an oz.au MX won't be installed.  (Visibility
can be achieved by either actually connecting to ACSnet using MHSnet
or SunIII, or by connecting, directly or indirectly, to an ACSnet site
and getting them to broadcast a connection to you over ACSnet).

In any case, to the example here - org.au is specifically for that rare
organisation that is not commercial, is not educational, and is
not government.   It does mean "organisation" though, not "random
collection of sites who want to group themselves together".  Apart
from anything else, its simply crazy for people to bind their names
in any way to the thing that currently provides them service.   That
would be kind of like every organisation that connects to uunet
using "thing.uu.net" as their name (which they did for a while, but
which fortunately was quickly stopped) - individuals, etc, should
get a name for themselves.

The problem has been (and remains) that there is currently no good
place to register individuals (in the US most of them register in .com
which is pretty silly really, and has made the .com domain absurdly
large - that's because the .town.state.us thing is both too rigid, and
geographicaly based).

Finally, on this thread - please be aware that if its legal for a
set of hosts named x.foobar.org.au y.foobar.org.au z.foobar.org.au ...
to send mail over AARNet, then its legal for those sites to send
mail over AARNet using whatever names they please (x.edu.au y.com.au
z.priv.au ...)  Its not the name that's permitted/not-permitted its the
traffic.  On the other hand, if it wouldn't be legal for y.com.au to
send traffic over AARNet, calling them y.foobar.org.au doesn't make it so.

kre

Appendix ...

To register a name in edu.au or gov.au send mail to

	P.Elford@aarnet.edu.au

To register a name in com.au send mail to

	W.Jackson@praxa.com.au

To register a name in org.au send mail to

	hostmaster@munnari.oz.au

In all the above cases, include the name/address of the organisation
making the request, and the name that you would like to register,
plus if its not obvious, some brief details about the organisation.

To register a name in oz.au simply make the name visible on ACSnet.