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Grumpy campaign claims victory after auDA U-turns

Kevin Murphy, August 7, 2017, 09:44:45 (UTC), Domain Registries

Australian ccTLD administrator auDA has scrapped two unpopular policies following the ouster of its chairman last week, allowing campaigning domainers to claim victory.
auDA said it has done away with its member code of conduct and has reinstated its policy of publishing its board meetings’ minutes.
These were two of the key demands of Grumpy.com.au, a member-driven campaign orchestrated by domainer-blogger Ned O’Meara.
Grumpy had called for the unilaterally imposed code of conduct to be replaced by one created in consultation with members, and that’s what auDA is now promising.
auDA said:

A membership consultation process on a new Code of Conduct will be held, and a revised Code will be submitted to the 2017 AGM. A Code of Conduct for Board members will be developed as part of the next phase of governance work and members will have the opportunity to provide input prior to any final decisions.

The code banned members, under pain of losing their memberships, from harassing or abusing staff. But it also banned them from bad-mouthing the registry in public or via the media — effectively gagging criticism.
auDA also said it will reinstate the practice of publishing minutes. It had recently agreed to restore previously published minutes, but it appears than meetings in future will also be publicly minuted.
Reversing these two policies were two of four demands the Grumpy campaign had made.
Another, calling for the head of chairman Stuart Benjamin, was rendered moot when Benjamin, apparently fearing that he could not win a simply majority of votes, quit just a few days before a member vote was due to take place.
The fourth, which called for auDA to scrap its plan to build and operate an in-house registry infrastructure, also appears to be moot. The company now seems to be talking about outsourcing to a third-party back-end provider.
auDA had refused, citing legal reasons, to include anything but the vote of confidence in the chair on its agenda for last week’s special members meeting.
O’Meara, in a blog post Friday, welcomed the U-turns. He wrote:

Before a group of members ever took this massive step of calling a special meeting, we pleaded with auDA to sort these issues out. We were ignored; then rebuffed.

And here we are today – with every single resolution now resolved (hopefully) in the members favour.
That’s what you call a strategy that backfired spectacularly on auDA.

auDA also said that it has commenced the process of seeking out a new independent director/chair.


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