On 2012-06-06 15:54 , Greg Soffe wrote:
I always thought it would be nice if people had to provide a company number to register a .co.nz , so the NZ public could have a bit of faith in that there were actually legal entities behind the .co. names. Also if there was a requirement to be registered in a company name to get <company name>.co.nz squatters would have a hard time in NZ.
Or at least they'd need to spend a little bit more money (registering a NZ company isn't particularly expensive, can be done online, and the NZ Companies Office interprets conflicting names very tightly, such that "nearly the same" names won't conflict). I think it's far far too late to start treating .co.nz as anything but "legacy swamp space". However IMHO it would be quite reasonable (desirable, even) to have, eg, ltd.nz (registered company), inc.nz (registered society), etc. They'd have to be moderated 2LDs, to prevent squatters. Unfortunately the obvious "moderators" (Companies Office, Registry of Incorporated Societies) -- who could implement it as a "authenticate with us, specify DNS servers, get algorithm derived name" -- don't strike me as the most Internet savvy organisation... (And of course the InternetNZ/DNC policy for 2LDs actively discourages new 2LDs and moderated 2LDs. Plus of course "opening up the 2LD" would basically do away with any meaningful ability to have that sort of moderated hierarchy mean anything.) Still, one can dream. Ewen