Stop Registering .com.au, you’re being ripped off.

This is a follow up on the direct AU registration rort, that will affect every business in the country. I went to their public forum last week and I was stunned at the treatment I received because I asked questions. In addition to the verbal abuse and ridicule the presenter thought it was also funny to obscure my view while I was trying to take a photo of some of the slides. I had to physically get up and move to the back of the room to get a photo and he still moved around and laughed so I couldn’t get a shot.

John Swinson, the gentleman pictured above and the Chair of the panel told AUDA back in 2015 that this was a bad idea. He said in this paper that he “was not aware of any market demand for .au” This is the very question I kept asking and they would not answer. He would not tell us why he had changed his mind.

Here is the list of the panel members railroading this through so AUDA can get their hands on your money. Why? They have $21 million cash in the bank and they’re a not for profit. What the…?

 

Brett Fenton said in an article in 2015 that direct .au registrations “could potentially make  their exisiting .com.au domains less valuable” 

Please share and email [email protected]

What I learned

• The .au proposal is nothing more than a cash-grab

• You shouldn’t register any more .com.au’s

• They acknowledged in 2015 that this would devalue .com.au’s

• There’s been no drop off in .com.au sales (I wonder why!)

• You’re not guaranteed to claim your .au domain

• AUDA Do not care about your business just your money

Transcript

Hey, welcome back, Rankers. Thank you everyone who shared my video that I recorded last Tuesday. On Facebook and LinkedIn, it’s got over 11,000 views now, and people are really angry about direct .au registrations. Businesses are finally starting to wake up.

Do NOT register any .com.au domains

Last Thursday, auDA held a public forum for the Policy Review Panel. I went along. I took out most of my day. I can’t afford to do this. Like you, we’re busy, but I thought it was so important. I’m so glad I did, because I can confirm for you, this is simply a grab for cash. My advice to you right now is to not register any more .com.au’s, and I’ll give you one reason why. At the end of the day, I said, “People are going to stop registering .com.au’s because of what you’re doing. You’re making them less valuable, because if you registered a .com.au after April 2016, guess what? It’s not worth much anymore because you’re not allowed to, or you’re not eligible, to get a .au.”
When I told them that, they said, “There’s been no drop-off in .com.au sales.” This is from registrars, people selling these domains, and the panel themselves. They said, “There’s been no drop-off.” I said, “That’s because people don’t know what you’re doing.” You know what their response to me was? “Yeah, yeah.” So, don’t register these domain names. If you do have a contested domain name, guess what’s going to happen? You might not be able to get it, but the government might be able to get it, or guess what? You might have to pay someone else a lot of money to get it.

Ownership will be a lottery

Why are we doing this? For no good reason. You know what? They said, “If two parties can’t agree on who should get the domain name, meaning that one party isn’t prepared to pay the other party, guess what? It goes to an auction, and then we get all the money, all the money.” That’s why they’re sitting there. They’re like pigs at the trough, after your money and my money, and they are just printing this stuff, and they’re introducing this for no reason. There is no data to support it. I asked them. I said, “Why are you doing this?” You know what they did? They shouted me down. The chair of the panel of the day, someone from the ACCC, shouted me down while I’m trying to explain to the room how this could potentially hurt businesses.

They don’t want to know.

Another presenter, the man who was running the day, said that my video was misleading and incorrect. He said this to the whole room. I said, “Please correct me. Show me where the video is misleading. I don’t understand. People I talk to don’t understand, so please, help us understand.” He wouldn’t. He just kept saying, “It was misleading and incorrect.” I was trying to take photos of the screen to share on Facebook. He kept stepping in front of the screen so I couldn’t take a clear photo. I’ll put that photo in my blog. That’s the best I could get.

There was another point where I happened to suggest that people might get confused by what a .au is. I said, “I don’t know. They might mistake it for dot Austria.” At that point, a CEO of a registrar who sells these domains grabbed the microphone and said, “You’re as stupid as you look.” I’ve got no bones with him. He apologised afterwards. We hugged it out. That’s cool, but look, there’s a lot of businesses that stand to make a lot of money from an introduction of a .au.

Even in my own industry, there’ll be businesses out there that will want this, because guess what? If this goes ahead, there’s a lot of money to be made for us in cleaning up people’s mistakes as they do it. There’s a lot of money for us because there’s going to be increased competition in the search results from exact match domains, so more work for us, but these .com.au’s are already devalued, so stop registering them.

Email [email protected] and let him know your displeasure. Email [email protected], and ask for the audio to be released of this public meeting, because I can tell you, I am not lying. They tried to shut me down. If you need any confirmation that this all basically a grab for cash, here is one of the panel members saying back in 2015 that this could potentially make .com.au’s less valuable. There it is. They already know it, but they keep selling them. They keep selling them for the same price as what they did two years ago.
Where does that leave us? That tells us that these people are just after your money, and they’re coming after it. Guess what? I’m not going to let them. Are you?