South Africa Wants Control of .za 345
fdiaz5583 writes "Recently, the South African government wants to seize control of the .za domain. However, ICANN owns the domains and under the ICANN rules, they will not relinquish control. Mike Lawrie who is global administrator of domain names states: 'If it becomes illegal for me to do the job under South African law and if I am not authorized by ICANN to hand over the administration, the .za domain will have to shut down until the issue is cleared up'." We mentioned this tussle earlier. The .za administrator doesn't like the way the government is going about this; the government, of course, has men with guns, so it's not like he's going to win in the end, it's only a question of how ugly it will get.
As a concerned citizen... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm biased.
It seems lately I've developed a knee-jerk reaction to anything Microsoftian and/or coming from this two-bit^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H democratically elected leadership. When I see stupidity, I really dislike it. Unfortunately, it looks like it's on the rise.
To the world out there, I can only say a couple of things:
To the couple of South Africans who are reading this I just want to say:
That's it. Sit back and watch the show people, I can guarantee you will be entertained!
Symptomatic of DNS problems in general (Score:2, Interesting)
It's not a prospect anyone is looking forward to, but I think we should accept the fact that our system of TLDs and DNS hierarchy is going to fall apart. Our current system demands too high a level of political and economic consistency; eventually some large, politically powerful groups will break away and form their own system; or (perhaps more in line with current trends) the system will fall under the power of large corporations and people will break away and form their own roots.
So what needs to happen is the development of a system whereby multiple DNS roots can be easily used and DNS conflicts are resolved by the end-user rather than a commitee. It's unfortunate, but the Internet spans too many political and cultural boundaries for a "cathedral" model to be effective.
Other root zones... (Score:1, Interesting)
Common Sense... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thats the same as the US government not having regulatory control over their own airwaves/airspace. Crazy.
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The real beef is that governments are historically less speedy in providing the services required, but this should not prevent any government from having regulatory authority over the naming and addressing of the internet within its own borders.
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-Tim
A South African.
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I dont like the idea of potentially putting a company out of business because of governemental involvement, but some of the proposed regulatory changes will have to happen at some point in the future, in many places in the world.
Q?: Why should ICANN have a whip over the internet naming of an entire country? ICANN should recognise the regulations of govermental regulation of its namespace.
NO, not common sense, but History, laws and owners (Score:2, Interesting)
1. The US army (= the governement) created Internet
2. They authorized universities to connect
3. They authorized people in the world to connect
4. They authorized commerce
5. They delegated THEIR rights to ICANN
That's it. Internet belongs to the US governement that *GAVE* its control to ICANN.
Countries have nothing to say like they have nothing to say about Ford Motors or about International Red Cross.
Now, is that good ? That's ANOTHER question...
Re:Alternativly (Score:3, Interesting)
There is one person (a south african, not foreign) running the domain right now, not any sort of committee. He has stated that he does not want to continue running it, sice he's been doing it for years without getting paid for it. He is running it basically because he was around when the opportunity to have a
I also did not take the comment about guns as a statement about south africa. Every government in the world has guns, and very few seem overly afraid to use them. In fact, there's not a country in the world that the statement "the government, of course, has men with guns" would not apply to. I think this statement certainly wouldn't be out of context if used on, e.g. America.
This makes little sense (Score:5, Interesting)
.za should not belong to South Africa because it refers to them,
I think if myself and the other residents on my street joined together and tried to seize control of our postal code (after all, it is how people send stuff to our street) we would be laughed at because it makes no sense.
Now I realise that puchasing of domain names has lead to a way of thinking that domain names belong to their owners, and therefor who better to own a country wide domain name than a body in that country, but I feel that is a misconception.
A more correct term for purchasing domain names is registering domain names (which can involve the transfer of money) which actualy implies the assignment of rights rather than the assignment of ownership. You get the exclusive right to have that name point at you, but it is never owned because it is just a name, and it belongs to the people using it to refer to you as much as anyone else.
Now what would help people (myself included) understand the situation better is an explaination of what you can actually do once you have 'seized control of
Please would someone care to explain the implications of such a situation. If it has all sorts of potential implications on how the internet or other global systems could pan out then it would be of great interest if these were explored in detail, otherwise who has control of a domain name seems rather irrelevant news.
Re:As a concerned citizen... (Score:3, Interesting)
Even acknowledging all this problems, South Africa's government is not bad by world standards. Firstly, they hava managed to retain a very high level of freedom for all South Africans, mor than can be said of That Major Democracy Across The Atlantic. Secondly, they have worked very hard to provide for the primary health care and education needs of a largely underprivledged population.Thirdy, they have implemented basically sound economic policies.
There are a lot of cluess idiots in the South African government, but equally there are many clueless idiots in any government. The important point is that the government is working to make sure that all the tenents of the Bill of Rights are fulfilled for all South Africans.
Sure, this is a stupid step to take, but it does not make SA a banana republic, any more than the DMCA makes the USA a banana republic.
South Africa's mistake is... (Score:4, Interesting)
South Africa's mistake is that they chose option 3, and I will explain.
Option 1, overthrowing ICANN is an interesting option (good? bad? I dunno). This is clearly NOT South Africa's intent however.
Option 2, Working within ICANN's rules would have saved everyone a big headache. The current
So, what's wrong with Option 3? A web site is useless unless people can find its IP address. The only way to find the IP address is to look it up in the list published by the official domain administrator. To find this list they ask their LOCAL ISP (probably NOT in South Africa). If the South African government "seizes" control - publishes it's own list and preventing the current administrator from publishing a list, then the "official list" vanishes".
It would then be up to individual LOCAL ISP's to take it upon themselves to use the unofficial South African government list, or to follow the rules and answer "UNKNOWN".
The internet works on COOPERATION. Without it
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Re:Similar to .au recently? (Score:5, Interesting)
Specifically they want to replace the non-profit organisation Namespace [namespace.org.za] (whom Mike Lawrie consults to) with a huge unwieldy bureaucracy that will cost the taxpayers millions and is overseen by the Communications Minister. In other words, a simple administrative function that has been performed superbly by a single highly-competent individual over the last decade will now be replaced by an eighteen person board of directors whose salary bill alone is millions per year. Not only that but the Government's spin on the whole debacle is that they are imposing some form of democracy on the current evil monopoly that Mike Lawrie has subjected us all to.
This is complete bullshit. Mike Lawrie and Namespace have repeatedly tried to get the Government involved in ccTLD administration with no success for many years now. The Department of Communications, led by two politicians whose only qualities seem to be an equal balance of power hungriness, greed and incompetence (Ivy and Andile - yes, this means you two) say that Government control over
A few facts are in order.
And yes, as a South African journalist who's been following this saga for quite some time, I don't mind saying that I'm really pissed off.
South Africa has rule of law, you know (Score:2, Interesting)
"...the government, of course, has men with guns, so it's not like he's going to win in the end, it's only a question of how ugly it will get."
We have the rule of law,you know, and an excelent constitution. I trust our constitution to protect my rights. More so than in most "first world" countries.
This argument will certainly not be settled by men with guns, but most likeley in the South African Constitutional Court.
The goverment has been challenged on constitutional grounds before, and have in many cases lost. And the beautiful thing is, the decision of the Constitutional court is respected, and upheld.