AuDA
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| Founded | 1999 |
|---|---|
| Type | Non-profit |
| Location |
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Area served
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Australia |
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Key people
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Cameron Boardman (CEO) Stuart Benjamin (Chairman) |
| Mission | Policy authority and industry self-regulator body for the .au Country code top-level domain |
| Website | http://www.auda.org.au |
.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 the .au domain space for all Australians.
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 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 the .com.au 2LD operation exclusively to Melbourne IT, the commercial arm of the University of Melbourne, for a term of five years.
Unlike Elz who had not charged for domain services, 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 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.
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