MelbourneIT terminates up to twenty resellers - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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MelbourneIT terminates up to twenty resellers

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
July 10, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/MelbourneIT-terminates-up-to-twenty-resellers/0,139023166,120266545,00.htm

The new regulatory scheme for the Australian domain space has already found its first victims, with MelbourneIT reportedly terminating the contracts of up to 20 of its resellers.

Tom Valenta, spokesperson for MelbourneIT, told ZDNet Australia that between a dozen and 20 resellers had their contracts terminated following the recent go-live of the new domain name registration system. Under the old system MelbourneIT (MIT) was the only registrar for the .au domain space.

-We've looked at resellers who don't or won't comply with the auDA code of conduct and are therefore unsuitable for us as partners going forward," said Valenta.

auDA CEO Chris Disspain said that under the new rules registrars are obliged under the terms of their agreement with auDA to ensure that resellers agree to be bound by the code of practice, and that auDA can instruct registrars to take action against resellers.

-Under the previous regime there was no control over resellers save for their contract with MIT," said Disspain.

Valenta said that under the old system MelbourneIT was in a predominant market position, and he claims it had concerns about the legality of terminating contracts because resellers had nowhere else to go. Additionally, the code of practice only came in at the end of last year to provide a benchmark to measure resellers against.

-The concerns that we had about certain of our resellers were highlighted when the code of practice came up," said Valenta. He added that although MelbourneIT was constantly reviewing its relationships with resellers, there were no plans to terminate any more contracts.