.au Domain Administration Ltd (auDA), the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space, is commencing a review of its policies for the allocation and use of domain names in the .au domain space.

The terms of reference for the review require consideration of the following issues:

• Should .au be opened up to direct registrations (eg. domainname.au)? If yes, should there be any policy rules, and if so what rules?
• Should the eligibility and allocation policy rules for asn.au, com.au, id.au, net.au and org.au be changed? If yes, what changes should be made?
• Should the policy rules relating to the reserved list and misspellings be changed? If yes, what changes should be made?

The review will be undertaken by the Names Policy Panel (NPP), chaired by Derek Whitehead, former CIO at Swinburne University of Technology.  The NPP includes representatives of  key stakeholders in the Australian domain name system, including accredited registrars, domain name resellers, domain name holders, domainers, business, consumers, government, law enforcement, legal sector, IT industry and Internet users.

The deliberations of the NPP will commence in February, with the final report to the auDA Board due in November 2015.