[prawn]

Excitedly bought pjg.com.au off the drop list. Because of the underline on the link, I assumed it was pig.com.au. Realised my mistake and made a list of companies with the initials PJG, pitched them, and sold the domain for 10x what I paid. Not worth the hassle all up! Looks like it's lapsed and been bought by a domainer since.

[chrismorgan]

Huh, that’s the first time I’ve heard of a squatted .au domain in quite some years. For the most part people don’t try it because it’s against auDA rules. Even apart from the squatting rules, this particular registration is liable to cancelling because it doesn’t meet the eligibility criteria even before the even stricter rules that came in in April (though those don’t apply to this particular domain until they next renew it) because the domain name doesn’t match any business or trading name, or their line of business, or anything like that. In theory you could get this particular registration cancelled just by submitting a complaint to the registrar of record first, then to auDA if they don’t cancel it.

[prawn]

I've come across loads of squatted names over the years. I'm not familiar with the latest rules, but for a time you could just say that "pjg content site is a service provided by umbrellabrand pty ltd". What's the latest?

I did manage to get a domain cancelled the other week actually - renewed to an entity that had ceased renewing their ABN/ACN. Awkward process with the registrar though.

[chrismorgan]

Squatting has always been against the rules and grounds for cancellation.

The latest changes are tightening the eligibility criteria. I won’t enumerate them, https://www.auda.org.au/policy/au-domain-administration-rule..., §2.4.4 (Eligibility and allocation criteria → com.au and net.au namespace) is pretty approachable. Under those rules (and again, pjg.com.au is currently tied to the legacy rules, not these ones), pjg.com.au fails to satisfy any condition in sub-paragraph 2.4.4(2).

I have chrismorgan.com.au, and my claim for eligibility is actually slightly tenuous; I haven’t registered any business name (something like $40/year if I recall correctly); 2.4.4(2)(a) I slightly surprisingly fail because it cares about legal names, and my first name is legally Christopher, not Chris, so it doesn’t match (they define the term “match”); and so my claim depends on 2.4.4(2)(b), that “chrismorgan” is an acronym of “Christopher James Morgan”—an unusual but linguistically valid interpretation of the word “acronym”, including their definition of it.

[cromulent]

There are many that are squatted, but there is little active enforcement.

I just entered 3 random domains to test them and two were squatted.

http://ddp.com.au http://pbm.com.au

[chrismorgan]

I admit I’ve never gone looking.

Of those two, ddp.com.au is squatted, but pbm.com.au isn’t, though there’s a fair chance of it failing the eligibility criteria or violating other auDA rules.

I’d be interested to see someone do a widespread squatting scan and submit a bunch of complaints and see what comes of it. But it’d take long enough that I’m not going to do it.

[prawn]

Years ago it was a very common tactic to buy up any three-letter domains you could get and find targets to pitch them to. I think the going rate was about $800. People would grab them off the drop list and have a pretty decent strike rate. In the case of PJG there were things like P* J* Graphics or P* J* Group.

[eslaught]

Interesting, are there any other TLDs with such squatting rules?