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46-441: .au Domain Administration (auDA) is the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain , which is the country-code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Australia. It was formed in 1999 to manage the .au ccTLD with the endorsement of the Australian Government and the authority of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). It is a not-for-profit membership organisation that promotes and protects

92-415: A class-action lawsuit on behalf of .com.au domain holders. iiNet withdrew this action when Melbourne IT assured them it would not remove existing domains until at least October 1997, when competition in the .com.au administration was expected to exist. However, disenchantment in the way the .au domain was run persisted, leading to demand for a single regulatory body to oversee the namespace. See .oz for

138-453: A competitive tender process to Afilias , who will take over the running of the .AU registry on 1 July 2018. The new regime of competition and name policy began on 1 July 2002, with AusRegistry as the new domain name registry operator with 282,632 domain names under management. The new domain environment saw an increase in registrations, growing by over 3,000 domains in the first month of operations. Further liberalisation of domain policies over

184-414: A guarantee that retired codes will not be reassigned for at least 50 years, and the replacement of RFC 3066 by RFC 4646 for country codes used in language tags in 2006. The previous ISO 3166-1 code for Yugoslavia , YU, was removed by ISO on 23 July 2003, but the yu ccTLD remained in operation. Finally, after a two-year transition to Serbian rs and Montenegrin me ,

230-533: A non-alphabetic writing system , such as Latin script (.us, .uk and .br), Indic script (. भारत ) and Korean script (. 한국 ), etc. IDN ccTLDs are an application of the internationalized domain name (IDN) system to top-level Internet domains assigned to countries, including the United Kingdom, or independent geographic regions. ICANN started to accept applications for IDN ccTLDs in November 2009, and installed

276-409: A non-executive and managing director. Alan Cameron AO is the current Independent Chair of auDA having commenced the role in November 2019. Alan has an extensive legal background, more recently has worked as a consultant and company director. Previous Board Chairs include Chris Leptos and Stuart Benjamin. Previous CEOs include Cameron Boardman and Chris Disspain. The Australian Government undertook

322-737: A priority application become available to be registered by eligible members of the public. .au direct domain names proved popular with more than 716,000 .au direct names registered between March and December 2022. Community geographic domain names were added in August 2006. Country-code top-level domain In 2018, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) began implementing internationalized country code top-level domains , consisting of language-native characters when displayed in an end-user application. Creation and delegation of ccTLDs

368-618: A review of Australia's .au domain management in 2018, to ensure it remains fit for purpose in serving the needs of Australians online. auDA welcomed the government review. On 24 March 2022, auDA launched a new namespace, .au direct which provides a greater choice of names for Australian websites and email addresses. The new namespace allows Australians to register domain names directly before the .au, (i.e., example.au). The release of .au direct compliments existing Australian namespaces, including com.au, net.au, gov.au and org.au, and provides shorter, simpler Australian domain names. When .au direct

414-657: A trusted reputation among domains in Australia. auDA is the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space, charged with managing and maintaining a secure and stable domain name system . It achieves this through its main functions including: the development and implementation of domain name policy in the .au domain space, the licensing of 2LD registry operators, the accreditation and licensing of registrars and facilitating .au dispute resolutions. Through its sponsorship agreement with ICANN, auDA represents .au at ICANN meetings and other international fora, and

460-430: A world first for the domain name industry . See Also: .au § Registration Policies and Rules Informed by the original domain eligibility criteria developed by Robert Elz, auDA has maintained a policy of requiring registrants to have either an exact match or a "close and substantial connection" to their desired domain name. This "policy rich" approach to the name space, begun by Elz and continued by auDA, has meant

506-445: Is also responsible for the management of the .au domain name system zone file . The zone file is a text file which contains a list of DNS servers for the second-level domains in the .au domain space and contains the IP addresses of DNS servers for .au and second-level domains, where those DNS servers themselves are within .au. auDA also oversees and deploys new technologies and initiatives in

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552-1144: Is described in RFC 1591, corresponding to ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country codes. While gTLDs have to obey international regulations, ccTLDs are subjected to requirements that are determined by each country's domain name regulation corporation. With over 150 million domain name registrations as of 2022, ccTLDs make up about 40% of the total domain name industry. Country code extension applications began in 1985. The registered country code extensions in that year included .us (United States), .uk (United Kingdom) and .il (Israel). The registered country code extensions in 1986 included .au (Australia), .de (Germany), .fi (Finland), .fr (France), .is (Iceland), .jp (Japan), .kr (South Korea), .nl (Netherlands) and .se (Sweden). The registered country code extensions in 1987 included .nz (New Zealand), .ch (Switzerland) and .ca (Canada). The registered country code extensions in 1988 included .ie (Ireland) .it (Italy), .es (Spain) and .pt (Portugal). The registered country code extensions in 1989 included .in (India) and .yu (Yugoslavia). In

598-512: Is not in the business of deciding what is and what is not a country. The selection of the ISO 3166 list as a basis for country code top-level domain names was made with the knowledge that ISO has a procedure for determining which entities should be and should not be on that list. Almost all current ISO 3166-1 codes have been assigned and do exist in DNS. However, some of these are effectively unused. In particular,

644-552: Is responsible for the policies and operation of the domain. The current delegation can be determined from IANA's list of ccTLDs. Individual ccTLDs may have varying requirements and fees for registering subdomains . There may be a local-presence requirement (for instance, citizenship or other connection to the ccTLD), as, for example, the American ( us ), Japanese ( jp ), Canadian ( ca ), French ( fr ) and German ( de ) domains, or registration may be open. The first registered ccTLD

690-645: Is still registered in gb (ISO 3166-1 for the United Kingdom ), and no new registrations are being accepted for it. Sites in the United Kingdom generally use uk (see below). The former .um ccTLD for the U.S. Minor Outlying Islands was removed in April 2008. Under RFC 1591 rules, .um is eligible as a ccTLD on request by the relevant governmental agency and local Internet user community. Several ASCII ccTLDs are in use that are not ISO 3166-1 two-letter codes. Some of these codes were specified in older versions of

736-466: The zr ccTLD was not deleted until 2001. Other ccTLDs corresponding to obsolete ISO 3166-1 codes have not yet been deleted. In some cases they may never be deleted due to the amount of disruption this would cause for a heavily used ccTLD. In particular, the Soviet Union's ccTLD su remains in use more than twenty years after SU was removed from ISO 3166-1. The historical country codes dd for

782-509: The German Democratic Republic and yd for South Yemen were eligible for a ccTLD, but not allocated; see also de and ye . The temporary reassignment of country code cs ( Serbia and Montenegro ) until its split into rs and me ( Serbia and Montenegro , respectively) led to some controversies about the stability of ISO 3166-1 country codes, resulting in a second edition of ISO 3166-1 in 2007 with

828-613: The second-level domain and ccTLD to form one word or one title, creating domains such as blo.gs of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands ( gs ), youtu.be of Belgium ( be ), del.icio.us of the United States ( us ), and cr.yp.to of Tonga ( to ). The .co domain of Colombia has been cited since 2010 as a potential competitor to generic TLDs for commercial use, because it may be an abbreviation for company . Several ccTLDs allow

874-445: The .au domain space has avoided the cybersquatting and other illicit uses of domains prevalent in other more permissive domains. In 2016, the auDA board announced its decision to introduce direct registrations in .au – for example "yourname.au" – after the submission of the final report of the 2015 Names Policy Panel . This follows on from the introduction of direct registration in the .uk and .nz domain spaces. Direct registration

920-473: The .au domain space. The operation of the .au ccTLD began in 1986 with the delegation of .au administration to Robert Elz of the University of Melbourne by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Elz devised the second-level domain (2LD) name structure, including .com.au, .net.au, .edu.au and .org.au, and introduced policies concerning eligibility for these domains. These policies included reserving

966-507: The .au name space, which includes Domain Name System Security Extensions (DNSSEC) auDA's own Information Security Standard (ISS). The ISS security standard was developed by a security group formed by auDA after a compromise on a registrars data systems. The ISS standard is based on ISO 27001. The Total Internet Group comprising ddns.com.au, cheaperdomains.com.au & ib.com.au are the first registrars to be accredited in 2013

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1012-493: The .com.au 2LD for registered commercial entities trading in Australia, and only being able to register a domain that closely aligned with a registrant's commercial name. Elz was responsible for the day-to-day operation of the .au ccTLD with all services provided free. By 1996, as businesses realised the commercial potential of the Internet, management of registrations became too great a job for Elz to accomplish by himself. Elz licensed

1058-469: The .com.au 2LD operation exclusively to Melbourne IT , the commercial arm of the University of Melbourne , for a term of five years. Elz did not charge for domain services, but Melbourne IT ran domain registration on a for-profit basis, charging between $ 125–150 per year for registrations. Melbourne IT intended to remove the registration of pre-existing .com.au names whose owners had not paid registration fees by March 1997. This prompted ISP iiNet to file

1104-499: The .id.au sub-domain which was liberalised. In 2001, as a result of the Competition Model Advisory Panel's report, the operation of five key .au registries – .com.au, .net.au, .org.au, .asn.au and .id.au was put to tender. The winning bidder(s) were to operate the registry for four years. One bid, encompassing all five registries, from AusRegistry won. After 16 years of running the .AU registry, AusRegistry lost

1150-477: The .yu domain was phased out in March ;2010. Australia was originally assigned the oz country code, which was later changed to au with the .oz domains moved to .oz.au . An internationalized country code top-level domain (IDN ccTLD) is a top-level domain with a specially encoded domain name that is displayed in an end user application, such as a web browser , in its native language script or

1196-537: The 1990s, .cn (People's Republic of China) and .ru (Russian Federation) were first registered. There are 308 delegated ccTLDs. The .cn , .tk , .de , .uk , .nl and .ru ccTLDs contain the highest number of domains. The top ten ccTLDs account for more than five-eighths of registered ccTLD domains. There were about 153 million ccTLD domains registered at the end of March 2022. IANA is responsible for determining an appropriate trustee for each ccTLD. Administration and control are then delegated to that trustee, which

1242-430: The ISO list. ccTLDs may be removed if that country ceases to exist. There are three ccTLDs that have been deleted after the corresponding 2-letter code was withdrawn from ISO 3166-1: cs (for Czechoslovakia ), zr (for Zaire ) and tp (for East Timor ). There may be a significant delay between withdrawal from ISO 3166-1 and deletion from the DNS; for example, ZR ceased to be an ISO 3166-1 code in 1997, but

1288-551: The Latin alphabet, using two-character codes. The number was 316 as of June 2020 , with the addition of internationalized domains. Also unofficially used for Cartoon Network -related domains. Was previously used as a free domain service to the public Kazakhstan." Also unofficially used by Canton of Schaffhausen in Switzerland Internationalised domain names have been proposed for Japan and Libya . The IANA

1334-449: The board of directors. The auDA Board is ultimately responsible for directing the organisation. There are two distinct categories of directors, appointed directors and elected directors. Appointed directors are approved by the board. Elected directors are appointed via a ballot of .au members. Rosemary Sinclair AM has been auDA's CEO since March 2020. Her career spans the telecommunications, technology and energy sectors, with experience as

1380-610: The ccTLDs for the Norwegian dependency Bouvet Island ( bv ) and the designation Svalbard and Jan Mayen ( sj ) do exist in DNS, but no subdomains have been assigned, and it is Norid policy to not assign any at present. Two French territories— bl ( Saint Barthélemy ) and mf ( Saint Martin )—still await local assignment by France's government. The code eh , although eligible as ccTLD for Western Sahara , has never been assigned and does not exist in DNS . Only one subdomain

1426-810: The content or use of websites, which may be handled by the Australian Communications & Media Authority , the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman, the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission , a state or territory fair trading office, the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner , or through civil court proceedings, depending on the nature and content of the complaint. Domain complaints may relate to: Industry complaints may relate to

.au Domain Administration - Misplaced Pages Continue

1472-2698: The creation of emoji domains . Some ccTLDs may also be used for typosquatting . The domain cm of Cameroon has generated interest due to the possibility that people might miss typing the letter o for sites in the com . Some of the world's smallest countries and non-sovereign or colonial entities with their own country codes have opened their TLDs for worldwide commercial use, some of them free like .tk . A   .ac .ad .ae .af .ag .ai .al .am .ao .aq .ar .as .at .au .aw .ax .az    B   .ba .bb .bd .be .bf .bg .bh .bi .bj .bm .bn .bo .br .bs .bt .bw .by .bz    C   .ca .cc .cd .cf .cg .ch .ci .ck .cl .cm .cn .co .cr .cu .cv .cw .cx .cy .cz    D   .de .dj .dk .dm .do .dz    E   .ec .ee .eg .er .es .et .eu    F   .fi .fj .fk .fm .fo .fr    G   .ga .gd .ge .gf .gg .gh .gi .gl .gm .gn .gp .gq .gr .gs .gt .gu .gw .gy    H   .hk .hm .hn .hr .ht .hu    I   .id .ie .il .im .in .io .iq .ir .is .it    J   .je .jm .jo .jp    K   .ke .kg .kh .ki .km .kn .kp .kr .kw .ky .kz    L   .la .lb .lc .li .lk .lr .ls .lt .lu .lv .ly    M   .ma .mc .md .me .mg .mh .mk .ml .mm .mn .mo .mp .mq .mr .ms .mt .mu .mv .mw .mx .my .mz    N   .na .nc .ne .nf .ng .ni .nl .no .np .nr .nu .nz    O   .om    P   .pa .pe .pf .pg .ph .pk .pl .pm .pn .pr .ps .pt .pw .py    Q   .qa    R   .re .ro .rs .ru .rw    S   .sa .sb .sc .sd .se .sg .sh .si .sk .sl .sm .sn .so .sr .ss .st .su .sv .sx .sy .sz    T   .tc .td .tf .tg .th .tj .tk .tl .tm .tn .to .tr .tt .tv .tw .tz    U   .ua .ug .uk .us .uy .uz    V   .va .vc .ve .vg .vi .vn .vu    W   .wf .ws    Y   .ye .yt    Z   .za .zm .zw .κπ ( kp , Cyprus ) - .日本 ( Nippon , Japan ) .bl .bq .eh .mf .su .xk .bv .gb .sj .an .bu .cs .dd .tp .um .yu .zr Domain name registry Too Many Requests If you report this error to

1518-546: The current .au landscape include the Name Policy Advisory Panel of 2000, and the Competition Model Advisory Panel of 2000. The latter concluded that the .au domain space should be as open as possible, with competition at both the domain name registry and the domain name registrar levels. The Name Policy Advisory Panel resulted in naming policy remaining mostly unchanged, with the exception of

1564-437: The domain name's registrar of record. The sole remedy in a licensing complaint is cancellation of the domain name. Unlike auDRP complaints, the domain name cannot be transferred to the complainant. Once cancelled, the domain name again becomes available to the general public for registration. Domain names may also be subject to court proceedings and orders. Participants in the auDRP Process are required to declare whether or not

1610-657: The domain space for the public good. ADNA, however, was marked by internal conflicts. After two years of internal struggles, ADNA was renamed .au Domain Administration (auDA) and adopted a new constitution, procedures, and board. The Department of Communications, Information Technology and the Arts set objectives for the new auDA board to reach in order for the new entity to gain endorsement as an industry self-regulatory body, endorsement achieved in December 2000. The inaugural board of

1656-625: The early history of .oz.au. In recognition of the deteriorating state of .au, the Australian Internet community – primarily through several key industry associations and personalities – held a series of forums to work out a way forward. The result of this period of collaboration was the establishment in June 1997 of a new policy development body called Australian Domain Name Administration , or ADNA tasked with taking control of .au and operating

1702-636: The first set into the Domain Names System in May 2010. The first set was a group of Arabic names for the countries of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. By May 2010, 21 countries had submitted applications to ICANN, representing 11 languages. ICANN requires all potential international TLDs to use at least one letter that does not resemble a Latin letter, or have at least three letters, in an effort to avoid IDN homograph attacks . Nor shall

1748-659: The international domain name look like another domain name, even if they have different alphabets. Between Cyrillic and Greek alphabets, for example, this could happen. Generic Country Code Top-Level Domain or gccTLD refers to those TLDs which are technically "non-restricted ccTLDs" but used like traditional generic TLDs ( gTLDs ) rather than "country"-targeted ones. Most of the gccTLDs are primarily used as domain hacks : Lenient registration restrictions on certain ccTLDs have resulted in various domain hacks . Domain names such as I.am , tip.it , start.at and go.to form well-known English phrases, whereas others combine

1794-473: The management or services provided by an auDA accredited registrar, breaches of auDA codes of practice or other policies. In some cases, this has involved legal action. See: .au § .au Dispute Resolution Policy (auDRP) A licensing complaint may be made on the allegation that the domain name registrant does not comply with the auDA Licensing or Eligibility Rules applicable to the domain name. Since April 2021, licensing complaints are handled directly by

1840-473: The new organisation was elected in April 1999, and began the task of trying to help mould a new framework of policies for the .au domain space. As part of the process, the organisation obtained a reassignment of management of the .au domain space from the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), which had absorbed the responsibility for global root domain administration from IANA. This

1886-410: The next few years, including the abolition of limits on the number of domains owned and removal of rules banning the registration of generic domains (such as flowers.com.au) saw the total domains under management grow to 710,428 by June 2006 – a growth of 252% in four years. By January 2017, there were more than 3 million .au domains under the management of AusRegistry, with the .au domain space enjoying

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1932-448: The relevant domain name is subject to a court proceeding. For example, an Australian Court may make orders concerning a domain name on the basis of trade mark infringement , passing off , or misleading or deceptive conduct . auDA is a member based organisation. The .au member program is open to anyone eligible to hold a .au domain name. Members are entitled to vote at General Meetings of auDA and to nominate and elect representatives to

1978-420: Was .us , which was registered in 1985. Later ccTLDs registered in that year included .uk and .il . Then, .au , .de , .fi , .fr , .is , .jp , .kr , .nl and .se were also registered in 1986. In 1987, .nz , .ch , .my and .ca were registered. Later on, in 1988, .ie , .it , .es and .pt were also registered. As of 20 May 2017, there were 255 country-code top-level domains, purely in

2024-446: Was due to be implemented in 2017 but did not go ahead at that time. It was launched on 24 March 2022. auDA is responsible for handling complaints and reducing fraud in domain name registration. This responsibility includes complaints regarding .au domain names, referred to as domain complaints and complaints concerning .au registrars and resellers, known as industry complaints . This responsibility does not extend to complaints about

2070-616: Was introduced on 24 March 2022, all .au domain names registered prior to its launch were placed on a Priority Hold under the Priority Allocation Process . Priority Allocation provided an opportunity for those holding an existing .au domain name licence to apply for the matching .au direct name if they wished to do so. E.g. the licence holder of example.com.au could apply for example.au. The six-month Priority Allocation period opened on 24 March 2022, and ended on 20 September 2022. After that time, matching .au direct domain names without

2116-472: Was the first formal agreement ICANN ever signed with a ccTLD operator. With the endorsement of the Australian Government and ICANN, auDA became the recognised ccTLD body for the .au domain space. auDA undertook reviews into .au domain policies. These reviews utilised experts from relevant fields to consider public and stakeholder submissions and feedback and devise policies. Key auDA panels that shaped

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