Stephenconroy.com.au resurfaces

Regulator says it's OK.

Australia's domain name regulator AuDA would not take down stephenconroy.com.au today after it was registered for a second time by a company to voice their opinion on censorship of the internet in Australia.

The domain was put into what is known as "pending delete" after AuDA said it had contravened its policy. This meant the domain name became unresolvable and unusable.

Once deleted, the domain was again registered by the company, named Sapia, but this time legitimately, said AuDA CEO Chris Disspain.

"This registration ... would be on the basis that they have a registered business name and that registered business name is 'stephenconroy' and so therefore they are entitled to stephenconroy.com.au because it is an exact match to their registered business name."

Disspain said AuDA, on the first occasion, had placed the domain into "pending delete" because Sapia had not provided it with a legitimate reason to have been eligible.

"They never provided [AuDA] with the information and they had 14 days to do this," he said.

"They never provided us with the information - with any information - to satisfactorily indicate that there was a close and substatinal connection between the business that Sapia had."

Disspain said AuDA's "original issue" with Sapia was that it had not provided AuDA with a "substantial connection" to owning the stephenconroy.com.au domain name. He explained how a "substantial connection" could be made.

"If I had a business called Chris’ flower shop I could register Chrisflowershop[.com.au]. I could also register my name. But I could also register tulips[.com.au] or roses[.com.au] because I could say there is a close and substantial connection."

Disspain said it was "absolutely legitimate" for the company to own the domain name on the second time they had registration the stephenconroy.com.au domain name as they had provided a registered trading name of "stephenconroy", a trading name registered by Sapia on December 18.

The stephenconroy.com.au domain name now redirects to stephen-conroy.com with a message stating its reasons for being eligible. On the stephen-conroy.com web site is a link to an image showing it had registered the trading name "stephenconroy" in Victoria and a link to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) web site to prove it.