by Simon Dudley Williams
On 1 August 2002, a new mandatory administrative dispute resolution policy and procedure came into effect for open second level Australia country code domain names, ie. .com.au, .net.au and .org.au, asn.au and id.au (".au Domain Names").
The ".au Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy" (known as "auDRP"), which is modelled on the ICANN Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP"), is expected to be a major improvement over the previous voluntary (and little used) dispute resolution procedure for .au Domain Names. The auDRP incorporates, however, a number of differences reflecting the stricter eligibility and allocation policy for .au Domain Names, as well as addressing certain practical shortcomings of the UDRP.