On Thu, 31 May 2012, Ewen McNeill wrote:
IIRC all those 1997ish dates were put on when the records were imported by Domainz, from Waikato.
If I recall correctly, the paid-for registration process was initially undertaken directly by ISOCNZ; Domainz was a trading name of The New Zealand Internet Registry Ltd which was not incorporated until 15-Apr-1997, as a subsidiary of ISOCNZ, which itself was incorporated in April 1995. (The domain domainz.co.nz wasn't registered until 9-May-1997.) Waikato stopped accepting registrations in late 1996 or early 1997, and new registrations were directed to ISOCNZ. Meanwhile existing domains were reserved pending identification of their holders, who were given until the end of March to get registered. All remaining unregistered domains were deactivated in April 1997. So the timestamps recorded in the SRS are the dates (but not times) when each applicant registered their domain. Strangely enough, given the choice between "pay now" or "pay later", many left it until March to get registered (myself and several universities included).
I suspect at this point any "pre-Domainz" data is probably long gone.
Indeed, they never saw it at all. My domain actually dates from 1991, but I would be very hard pressed to prove that now. -Martin