Internet Routes Around South African Gov't

Mister B writes: "In an end-run around the South African government's plans to seize control of the .za domain, administrator Mike Lawrie took pre-emptive action and moved the primary .za zone file offshore. Revealing their naivete, parliamentary committee chairman Nkenke Kekana accused him of destabilising the net! Then again, the opposition think he's a hero. :-) More details on MSNBC."

If not the government?

Um, shouldn't the government be in charge of the .za domain name? I mean who do you think should be? some random person who happens to have control at the moment?

Country codes are for countries, and decisions for the countries are made by their governments.

Re:If not the government?

Its not a random person at all, the admin was delegated control by the precursor to ICANN. He's been doing this for free for almost 10 years, from what I have been told.

The government is seeking control of the .za domain, and the admin want's to get rid of it. But he doesn't want to give it to the government with the laws and controls they want to put on the .za domain. The government are the total morons in this issue, mainly because they cannot understand the internets DNS and processes of that.

Re:So?

Determining who's in charge of and who should be in charge of South Africa can be quite interesting.

More importantly, ICANN has policy prohibiting involvement with national entities, or making TLD changes at national request. They know that goverments in coups or breakaway states can get an easy legitimization by getting their own TLD. They follow *only* the ISO country code charts. To some degree, this guy is simply following in the same spirit -- keeping the Internet out of national power squabbling, and maintained by the same set of volunteers and computer gurus who have kept the thing working well for ages.

Re:So?

Determining who's in charge of and who should be in charge of South Africa can be quite interesting.

Of course, as you imply, this has nothing to do with "who's in charge of South Africa", and everything to with "who's in charge of a set of config files that identify a logical region roughly congruent with South Africa within an independently administered opt-in internetwork".

Re:So?

That the South African government "does a good job" with its domain in the eyes of us geeks is NOT a prerequisite for sovereignty.

The ".za" domain name is neither a person nor is it land. Therefore I don't see what sovereignty has to do with anything. If I write a book called "South Africa", does the South African government get to decide who around the world can read it?

Top-level domains are not national property; they are a logical construct brought into and maintained in existence by whoever runs the root servers, for the convenience of internet users. Those who run the root servers have pledged no allegiance or subordination to the South African government.

Re:So?

Why? Who gave the South African government control over the .za domain? If there was a ".southafrica" domain, would they have automatic right to control that, too? If I invent a new namespace tomorrow, does that mean governments automatically get portions of it that they control? There's no "matter of course" about it. Many ccTLDs are not controlled directly or indirectly by the corresponding governments, but by universities or telephone companies.

Now, since the organization or person controlling a country's ccTLD usually resides in that country, it's not as if the government has no say...

But, the point is precisely that "this guy" is who the people running the root name servers chose as the administrator of the .za domain. There _is_ a process that ICANN has for transferring domain ownership. The South African government just doesn't want to play along; it wants to tell ICANN what to do, and it doesn't have that right. Nor is government appropriation of a previously private role to be taken lightly.

Re:If not the government?

You're absolutely right. Lawrie doesn't want to give it to the government because of the laws they want to put on the .za domain. Unfortunately there are 60%+ of the population who democratically elected the government to represent their interests, and Lawrie doesn't actually have a fucking say in WHAT laws government intend to make.

The SA government has to abide by ICANN rules, yes. ICANN rules require that the ccTLD administrator has the blessing of the national government, which Lawrie does not, and never did have. Apart from that, they do not require that SA not apply its national laws to domain ownership, dispute resolution, policy formation, etc, etc.

Re:If not the government?

why *should* the za gov have control over the za domain?

Because the ccTLDs are considered a national resource, and even ICANN and the US government (since they are the ones that hinted this to ICANN in the first place) recognise that.

if I set up a name of microsoft.fyonn.net then should m$ have control over where I point that name?

Invalid comparison. We're talking about ccTLDs. These a top level domains which are INTENDED - by virtue of using the ISO country code - to be associated with a country. Should (for example, and I'm not trying to piss Australians off ;) ) an Aussie have "got there first" and "registered" .uk, how do you think the UK government would react?

Nominet has done a good job of administering domains in the UK. That's great. Mike Lawrie has done a good job technically for the .za namespace, but he has (in line with ICANN recommendations for the ccTLD manager) largely kept away from policy issues.

That is a major issue. Beucase it means that .za domain holders (3rd level in particular) don't have a decent policy framework to regular their dealings with the registrar, and in particular for the dispute process.

The problem with IS and zanet.org.za is a case in point. The dispute resolution policy is "we'll only make changes if the administrative contact agrees". So far no-one has served IS with a court order, but it will probably take at least that in order to get them to make a move.

computer based queries. it's "run" by ICANN (for all their faults) and they get to decide what domains get adminstrated where, it is their system and their root servers after all (in essence) ... how can the za gov nationalise something which is determined overseas?

By ICANN's own rules (see my other /. postings) any change to the manager/management of a ccTLD has to be approved by the national government. Mike Lawrie's role was never approved in the first place, because the government back then (pre-democracy) was, quite frankly, not interested.

as far as I can see mike lawrie is doing his job. he has been given the task of admining the za domain to the best interests of the za internet community.

Lawrie took on that job voluntarily. Arguably he has the best technical interests of the za internet networks at heart, but he has never shown that he has the best interests of the community - policy wise - in mind.

he has decided that in his opinion, he does not want the za gov to control the domain as he thinks that it will not be in the best interests of the za internet community

Precisely ... and you're supporting the decision of one man to deny the instructions of a democratically elected government?

DNS is not a nice global agreement maintained by volunteers out of the goodness of their hearts. It is a global resource, and most countries and organisations - the US government and ICANN included - recognise that. WIPO recognises domain names as property.

Much as the SA postmaster doesn't have the right to tell all postmasters around the world that the address "SOUTH AFRICA" should be sent to his offices in Namibia for sorting before delivery to SA, Lawrie doesn't have the right to administer the .za namespace against the government's will.

Re:If not the government?

Direct Quote from Mav[LAG] #31387 in responce to the same question the last time this was brought up on slashdot explains it best.
No one here in South Africa minds who controls .za as long as a) it works and b) it's managed according to the RFC and the informal rules that the late John Postel put in place circa. 1985. The local Internet community are totally opposed to the ridiculous provisions of Section X of the Government's Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill.(Some of the other sections are equally idiotic but let's stay focused here).
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 .za will lead to some kind of new era of Internet prosperity where all people in our country will suddenly get Internet access.
A few facts are in order.

* The South African Government cannot even manage it's own name servers - let alone the whole country's. Five out of six of them are currently mis-configured or not working. If they do take over and .za suddenly goes dark for a few days because of some technical or beauracratic cock-up, our economy will suffer enormously.
* Internet access for all is dependent on our telecommunications infrastructure and policy - which The Department of Communications has - to put it politely - completely fscked up over the last eighteen months.
* The Department has not taken on board 1% of the industry advice it has pretended to listen to since it was taken over by the two current fools. Together they have crippled our local telecoms regulator so much that the incumbent phone monopoly can charge what it likes without fear of being slapped down.

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.

Re:If not the government?

Your 'baboon' reference is very offensive.

Democracies have the right to screw up. No sole, unelected individual has the authority to prevent a government from screwing up.

Sometimes its better if a government is allowed to screw up because it often lets the opposition in to have a chance to do better.

Responsible

"It would amount to sabotage if he were to disrupt the Internet and he has to realize that he will be held responsible for any disruption," Kekana said.

Well then ! By the government's argument isn't he doing the right thing?

If it is his job to ensure the internet setup in ZA remains stable, and he believes it will make ZA unstable if the government reassigns his job to someone else without first ensuring that the government has the infrastructure to take on this job, then wouldn't it then be his responsibility to take steps to make sure the government could not carry out any destabilizing action?

Just carrying out his job, he is. No?

I wish the news articles on MSNBC weren't so skimpy. Where's the BBC when you need it? Are there any more clearly-written summaries of all this out there?

dangerous

A lot (if not all) internet businesses will depend on DNS working fine. And just 1 guy can bring it down? Why? How?

I wouldn't like to live in SA right now. He myght be a hero now, but he may become a non-hero whenever he likes. Also, he may die with some passwords unknown (recall the s. hacker contest for the library), or ran out of resources, etc.

It should be run by an independant goverment agency with stable staff and that directly depends on ICANN. Something like an independant Central Bank, but for hosts/domains.

Geeks created the internet

Geeks created the internet and Geeks should control it.
Computer Geeks tend not to be to concerned with politics they have a higher standard "Network Integratiy"

sorry for any typos Ive been drinking

Government ot Organazation

The government or organazation should hold the records for this company. If for nothing else, than for the "what happens if he gets hit by a bus"

So who controls the primary zone file in China?

Did they go throught the same sort of issues? Does the state control it?

Root Name Servers

Last I knew there were 13 Root Name Servers, and only 3 operated ouside the U.S. with NONE in South Africa.

If the S.A. gov't "takes over" the Zone file by force, what is to stop ICANN from simply installing the .za Zone File on their own box and making THAT box the primary?

The S.A. gov't doesn't get it. 200 lines of data can't be controlled by physical seizure. Grab the box and you've got a generic PC if ICANN decides.

http://www.icann.org/committees/dns-root/y2k-sta te ment.htm

Who're the badguys?

We can't have it both ways. The South African government's point is that ICANN, by controlling country domains, ignores sovereignty and dictates to states; a position no corporation, no matter how "democratic", should assume.
I'm not jumping out of my seat to hand control of the internet to governments, but let's at least stay consistant with the ICANN bashing stories that show up on Slashdot, and try to be a bit more impartial.

Re:Who're the badguys?

Uh.

ICANN is a directory service.

They are an independent organization which has set up a worldwide infrastructure to translate machine "names" into Internet Protocol addresses.

Let me repeat: they are a directory service. They are providing information about this country. No one "owns" anything as regard the country domains besides a contract with ICANN, the independent, international organization, to handle the names for that country.

ICANN is forcing *nothing* on *anyone*. ICANN forces nothing because all communication with them is voluntary. You do not have to use the ICANN's network if you do not want to; all you have to do to disregard the ICANN is to go to the Internet control panel for your operating system and change your Domain Name Server to something not controlled by ICANN. The simple fact is that the citizens of South Africa have all decided to use ICANN for their internet name service, and as a result of this South Africa's government believes they somehow have the right to dictate how ICANN operates. If south africa does not like this, they may set up their own network of domain name servers and request all south american citizens to switch to the national servers. The south american citizens probably won't. The south american citizens, it seems, have chosen they want to get their domain name information from ICANN-appointed bodies, and the government is trying to interfere with, undo, and reverse that choice that each of their citizens has individually made.

Not the right answer.

Sorry, but the .za domain -should- be in the hands of the South African government... and not under the fully control of an individual citizen who could go off the deep end at any moment. Or get hit by a bus.

So the keys are hidden. What if he DOES get hit by a bus in the next week? THEN what happens???? This is NOT a good situation.

With government ownership and control, the South African government can be responsible for the success or failure of the domain.

The people and institutions in South Africa may thank him for his efforts and may want him to continue to be involved in the domain. However, few of those same people support his tactics.

*Who* was planning to hit Mike with a bus?

Yes, Mike could go off the deep end, or get hit by a bus. But if he *does* get hit by a bus in the near future, we'll have a good idea who did it. :-)

Internet namespace, like many other activities, is an activity for civilized society to make intelligent decisions about. Governments sometimes get into power by being the most intelligent people in civil society, like Plato's hypothetical philosopher-kings, but they often get to power by being a bunch of violent corrupt thugs, or by being a more popular alternative group of people who led a popular revolution to overthrow a bunch of violent insane corrupt thugs, but that doesn't mean that either they have any skills for operating an internet or that they have any moral authority for doing so. And apparently they South African government has demonstrated that they don't have Clue 1 about how to run an Internet. It's simply not their skill set, and there's no reason for it to be their job.

Unlike non-country-code domains, where there's no obvious reason why there should be One Root To Rule Them All or why the US government should get to appoint the people to run it, country-code domains do have some obvious connection to the countries they're named after - but does that mean they should be run by the Post Office, or the One Phone Company, or by some internet standards committee (my preference), or by the Chamber of Commerce, or by the [Insert-Country-Name] National Geographic Society, or simply by the First-Come-First-Served rule? It's a hierarchical name space, and that inherently means somebody's in charge. Failing to define that up front, as the internet failed to do, leads to all this Root Wars nonsense, and it's not inherently fixable.

Large scale alternative DNS

Today's Friday where I live, so my slashdot persona is going to be in a more observational and theoretical mode.

I don't like the way ICANN presently works, but it seems a bit wrong for any government to decide it wants to usurp something independent that lots of others have devoted so much hard work and effort towards, just because it's successful. (On the other hand, I know this happens all the time.) I also don't have a whole lot of respect for the current South African government.

The ideal way for a government to deal with something like this in theory would be to set up its own DNS system in competition that's administered by the government under its own terms. Then it would try to convince people and ISP's, both in SA and everywhere else, to use it instead of the ICANN-authorised one. The biggest problem with doing this is that it could turn out to be risky if not completely impractical. There will probably always be people who will never allow anything other than ICANN to reach their users.

There have been lots of attempts at alternative DNS's set up against ICANN, but most haven't been incredibly successful scale-wise. Most of them haven't had a major organisation or government behind them, though. With the extra resources available though, is it technically feasible that a country could do something like set up an alternative DNS that people would trust if it chose to?

Um?? What country created the Internet?

The U.S. government created the Internet in the first place, so shouldn't they have control. Unlike corporations that pass the cost of R and D on to an entire planet of consumers the American people bankrolled this whole thing, so their government should have the right to administer it. If another government wants utter control over their TLD, they should have to pay for it. Didn't the U.S. Gov. lay out some guidelines or rules for dealing with situations like this?

South African gov't

If the government wants control so bad why don't they do what they normally would do and just kill the guy?

:-D

not hard for the Govt to take control...

all they need to do is set up their own SA dns servers and flip ICANN the bird. most any country can set up their own DNS easily.

this is nothing but a power struggle. there is nothing noble being done by either side.

leading the world in civil rights

its south africa

See, here is the problem...

OK. Right now .za is effectively controlled, along with everything else, by ICANN. And the problem in this case is that ICANN see fit to delegate this responsibility to a particular individual.

That may be good, that may be bad. Actually in this case it is good, because this guy has done a great job for quite a while (and for free), while south africa has royally fscked things up in their own country quite a bit. Furthermore, this guy is a good guy. He has been asking for someone to take the job off his hands for a while. And south africa are being jerks. The fogeys in the gov't decided to make this man's actions illegal, by means of passing a law causing anyone who controlls state "stuff" to be a criminal.

But the above is irrelevant. ICANN shouldn't decide who controlls top level domain names! thats the job for governements. Or maybe the united nations!

Actually, it is ICANN's jobs. The United States of America created something called "ARPAnet", the departement of defense created a computer netowork in order to survive a nuclear attack. And then it blossomed into the internet, a very american and commercial enterprise. And so the gov't, and some other people, made ICANN.

now, ICANN has some 'issues', but they most certainly do their job. And it is most certainly their job. South africa, if they really care, can make their own internet. They can call it "ZANet," which is somewhat catchy. That would be the governemet's job.

However, until the gov't demonstrates that they can successfully administer .za, they should not be allowed to try. Why break something if it works?

And finally, I get to what I am really ranting about. Geopolitical issues and the internet. I think that it is really stupid that any country should be able to control someone in another country because they can access their data. China and censorship. France and that nazi stuff they were trying to censor. Frankly, I think that if the stuff is hosted here, our laws apply. If someone starts a new country, lets call it "bastardlawsuitland," and then makes a law that slashdot is illegal, can they sue slashot because slashdot didn't make itself inaccessible to them in their country?

By the current laws, which admittedly are very very vague, the answer is yes. And that pisses me off to no end.

Oh, I have karma to burn, by the way. But I am pissed off and this is relevant.

No you listen up

And lay off the name calling. It may score you mod points but it really is juvinile.

I never claimed that ICANN couldn't or wouldn't accept the South African government's control of the .za file. My poit is that wether they do or no is entirely up to them. The government can't "seize control" if ICANN tells them they can't. Now I haven't seen a statement form ICANN one way or another, so I don't know what they intend.

I am attempting to respond to those that think that the South African government can somehow just take control of the domain against ICANN's wishes (and many who seem to think that is a great thing). No, they can't. If they take over the domain and ICANN choses NOT to accept their authority, their only recourse would be:

1) To attempt to use physical force to make ICANN and the roots obey their wishes. Since most of the roots and ICANN itself are located in the US, this is not possable.

2) To attempt to use legal force to make ICANN obey their wishes. This could potentially work, the courts would hear the case at least.

3) To ignore ICANN and operate their own root level service.

Now again, this is all assuming that ICANN does indeed decide to deny the government's authority. If they say ok to the change over, that's the end of it.

However, the point of my post is to attempt to explain the nature of the whole DNS heirechary to the people that are under the mistaken impression that a government can simply "seize control" of a domain. They can't, ICANN can simply instruct the roots not to listen to them. As with all DNS information, it's based on trust. The roots trust ICANN, most DNS servers in the world trust the roots, the roots trust those that are approved to administer changes to a given domain. Thus, for most people, what ICANN says, goes.

About the only way this will get changed is if the US courts decide ICANN is doing something wrong and force a legal rememdy on them, or a large alternate root network comes to life and gets widely accepted.

Now I'm not trying to endorse ICANN or disparage them, i'm just telling you how it is. For now, they make the rules regarding DNS. They can, at their discression, decide wether to accept the South African government as the new administrator of the .za domain and there is little the government can do about it other than challenge it in US court.

Again, this is all dependant on what ICANN decides. They may well decide to allow the government to administer the .za domain and then that is that. However there seems to be a misconception that the government can somehow usurp authority without ICANN's permission and that is simply not true.

Next time, read a little more carefully and try not to resort to namecalling. It makes you sound like a little kid.

Why Map To Countries Anyway?

Why map to country names in the first place? The packets will find their way.

I Think We May Be Missing the Point

The discussion above seems to be centered on who should have control of the .za TLD when that isn't really the issue.

I certainly don't have a problem with the South African government controlling the domain, but there is a procedure for them to get control. If they would go to ICANN and follow the procedure all would be happy.

Instead, they seem to be attempting to hijack the .za with no regard to the system that is already in place. Is that really appropriate? ICANN is in charge at this point whether we like it or not. Can we really support nations ignoring the system and doing their own thing?

The bottom line is that the South Africa government thinks that it is above the system. I suggest that they try the proper procedure for acquiring control of the domain. They should at the very least wait to get hostile until they have good reason to be (such as having their request for control rejected inappropriately).

Yeah, I'm probably wrong though.

These are the same people...

that go into a shop, buy a whole lot of goods, write a cheque, which will not go through.
When the Minister is told that he does not have enough money in his account, his response is this: "That can't be true, I still have lots of Cheques in my Cheque-book."

This is a true story.... Can't find the article online, but it was reported in the papers.

Now I ask you, if you have no idea of how a cheque account works, how the hell are you supposed to even come close to understanding the net.

Blows ones mind....

.mv is owned by the gov...

And they only let their 'friends' get domains, everyone is has to pay by the nose. And also these domains are things that they like, and ofcourse they have all the right to cease and void any domain (not to mention arrest anyone) that violates their silly little rules. Dhiraagu is their crone, run by the facist/imperlistic Microsoftian C&W.

There, now you see what a gov owned TLD can do. I feel ZA would go the same was as MV. And no, I dont think a single person running it is a good idea either. Maybe it could go back to the universities (where ZA zones started) and be run by acadamics again instead of single man corporations spoon fed by ICANN?

Okay, here's what we do.

We take a page from B5, being geeks and all, and create an extra-governmental organization dedicated solely to the sanctity and security of the 'net.

Considering the US fathered the net, it'll be comprised of mostly US geeks to start, but we'll include a large number of Japanese geeks just so we can get katanas and manage to horribly mangle ourselves while our comrades emit Homer-esque cries of, 'Doh!'. However, geeks of any nationality are welcome to join the organization.

If a country needs help with their 'net infrastructure, we will help them. If, however, they try to do something stupid, we'll know about it - and so will everyone else. We will offer aid and assistance only as long as the country requests it.

Our creed?

"I am an administrator. We write the dark scripts that no one else dares call. We hog system resources, and no user may compile. We live for the net, we die for the net!"

Okay, okay, I admit, I just really, really, really want a workstation in a self-healing bio-organic case. :)

The real riddle...

Who is more accountable?

- the power grabbing government

- the file-hiding incumbent

Hard choice. I do not like either.

It seems to me...

...that a government (which should be an international organization even though that could be a nightmare) should only get involved in DNS administration if there is a problem with the current situation. Of course, you have to remember, these politicians probably think every .za site is actually located in South Africa, which - in that case - the domains *would* come under their jurisdiction. We all know, though, that many of the site are probably outside the country. My question - though - it who actually *owns* .za? ICANN? Aren't they prety much comtrolled by the US government?

Current nslookup info for .za

I'm trying to understand what exactly this guy did... It looks like there are several nameservers for the .za domain.. So one of them must be a primary, and they do domain transfers for all the other ones listed here, right?.. Anyone know where all of these are located?

> root
Default Server: A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET
Address: 198.41.0.4

> southafrica.co.za
Server: A.ROOT-SERVERS.NET
Address: 198.41.0.4

Name: southafrica.co.za
Served by:
APIES.FRD.AC.za
137.214.80.1
za
AUTH00.NS.UU.NET
198.6.1.65
za
HIPPO.RU.AC.za
146.231.128.1
za
MUNNARI.OZ.AU
128.250.1.21
za
NS.RIPE.NET
193.0.0.193
za
RAIN.PSG.COM
147.28.0.34
za
UCTHPX.UCT.AC.za
137.158.128.1
za
NS-EXT.VIX.COM
204.152.184.64
za
FLAG.EP.NET
198.32.4.13
za

NANP

The North American Numbering Plan (NANP), which defines the structure of telephone numbers, and assigns area codes to regions, is not "owned" by any government. It is something like the DNS of the public telephone system. The NANP has been run by AT&T, Bellcore, and now Neustar.

On local .za radio

The headline news said that Mike Lawrie hidden
the keys abourd and will colaps .za if he does not have his way. But a few minutes later
Mike Lawrie denices ever sending it. I think
the press put word in his mouth and that we need to wait until he has his say before we judge him.

ISOC's contribution

The ISOC global conference is starting on 18th June. It will be interesting to see what they say about this.

The South African chapter [isoc.org.za] in their submission to the parliamentary portfolio committtee support the bill [isoc.org.za], but they also point out some massive shortcomings, including that Appointment of ALL board members by the Minister is a gross violation of democracy. All in all they make some excellent suggestions. The question is whether they will be listened to. (No, they won't.)

I think it suffices to say the government representatives tasked with formulating this bill are not very sophisticated individuals (I mean in as far as their knowledge of technology goes of course ;) ). That alone should be reason enough for them to stay the hell out of its management.

Yebo gogo to my fellow ZAnians :)

Destable???

I'd actually give Microsoft more creedance that a split (of M$) would have a more adverse affect on the net. Not that I'd care, but the last time I went to a .za site was....

Come to think of it - Never!

Ok, fine I admit it, I'm an arrogant America-centric prick, but hey at least I'm not oblivious to that fact.

Press coverage

For those who want to read South African press coverage [namespace.org.za] of the saga.

It belongs to SA

I am always amazed at naivity of fellow geeks when it comes to politics. This whole saga about the .za is about global political manouvering.
Not so long ago there was an post [slashdot.org] on here about the US government moving to control ICANN. My understanding of the situation is the SA gorvenment is preempting what they see as an attempt by the US to control the Internet. Their primary objective is to have the .za domain control within SA. Obvoiusly, being politicians they will try to laverage power where ever they can. This is a point that Mike Lawrie missed. South Africa has regulatory and NGO bodies that have the power/resources to chalange unreasonable ministers and the bills they propose. Mr Lawrie did not use any of these bodies, he instead went off to the opposition party and asked them to fight off the gov. Now I read he's taken the .za offshore. Meanwhile, institutions that can bring sanity to this situation are left bemused by this action.

I know Mr Lawrie is following this on slashdot. I wish to say to him why hasn't he used the aparatuses provided by ICASA [icasa.org.za] and there is sangonet [sangonet.org.za], I know they do understand and sympathise with your cause (they are part of a powerful lobby within the ruling party).

To everyone who finds the SA gov actions deplorable; This is not the last such case we will see. Most governments are already questioning the legitimacy of ICANN to control a soveiregn country's domain space.
Next up Fance, who knows?

What does a past HIV/AIDS discussion have anything to do with this issue?

look as long as i get to keep my .za mail address!

i dont care who takes control, i like my dan@.za mail addy.

Technology

There is a lot of bitterness amongst South Africa's whites left over from their loss of power after the NP government went down in '94. This is the background to many of these disagreements and attacks etc. The present government *has* done a lot of good for the impoverished black majority of the country, but there are definitely a lot of politicians who have little qualification for the posts they occupy (is this surprising? happens all over the world). I seriously doubt that John Ashcroft could explain the mechanisms of root servers etc even if pressed to do so.

And here lies the problem. People who know what a zone file is or how it works (I myself only have a vague notion to be honest) are surely more fitting for the administration of the TLD. I very much doubt that the SA government would improve the administration in any way, but that's my opinion.

The same way many whites in SA are bitter about their loss of power and the apparent failings of the present government, there are many blacks in SA who are envious of the whites large percentage lead in tech jobs etc and therefore support the governments position on this one.

The answer, I think, lies somewhere in the middle. I think that Mr Lawrie has justified concern that some bureaucratic department setup to admin this thing will quite possibly make some royal technical desasters with it. On the other hand I understand the governments position that he should have consulted with them before moving the .za file over to the US, because, according to news here on /. the US government itself is looking to take over control of ICANN. If the government had been willing to talk to the guy and more importantly, listen to him, it would have been better for all.

Sadly, the SA government is no better at listening to individual people than any other government is.

Who can you trust?

So the question is really begging, but nobody really wants to answer it.

Who can we trust to administer the domain system?

A government, a group of governments, a group of individuals, or a corperation?
My gut response is none, all, some,and sometimes in no particular order
The internet was created on a trusted network achitecture.
That was great in the day when it was military and academic, but as the original architects feared, the net is not scaling well to a commercial and corperate environment.
Solutions?
Several I can see;

1.- Put it back in the hands of academia.
2.- Create a distributed user based system that is 'meta-moderated' something like the slash message system.
3.- Allow, or force a splinter into a sometimes compatible, sometimes not group of trans-internets that would sortof sometimes talk to each other in a fashion related to the way usenet works, and sometimes doesn't.

There's going to have to be medicine taken to fix these problems that have grown and grown, I'm just hopeful that whatever the medicine is, it doesn't kill the patient.

maybe...

we could just dump this icann crap and have each country owning their own section of the net.
maybe itd stop all those shifty .ru sites .ch sites and .au sites that arent australian. and all stuff like that.

Their own domain

What is stopping the government from setting up their own domain and then replicating the addresses on the interenet?

Isn't Parlament a cigarette?

I mean...look at South Africa's Parlament blowing out all that unhealthy smoke.

Rules

All the previous posts seem to be about who owns what and national sovereignty and such. This whole thing isn't about any of that. It's about the Internet being a large community with its own rules. There are well established rules for the transfer of TLD administration, and, if I've been reading the articles (I know, I know, it is /.) right, then Mike Lawrie is perfectly willing to give control to the government, if they go through the proper channels. Just because it's a sovereign nation, doesn't mean they can disregard international law, tradition and conventions. Basically, SA is just being rude and ML is refusing to roll over and take it.

Gov plus domain = recipe for disaster

The .gy (Guyana) TLD has the misfortune to have the University of Guyana (who use dial-up ISP's for their connectivity) as Registrants. The Technical side is handled by a gentleman at the University of Puerto Rico. All of which is fabulous except no-one can get .gy domains other than the .gov/.org/.edu.gy which are handled by
SDNP [sdnp.org.gy] [www.sdnp.org.gy].

Except, it would appear, for some big international corporations who have
managed to register theirname.gy or whatever. The rest of us here in Guyana
cannot get a domain. All attempts to lobby Government to hand the TLD .gy to
SDNP have fallen upon deaf ears. The Infomation Technology Providers Association
of Guyana ITPAG [itpag.org.gy] [www.itpag.org.gy] have a
position paper.

It now appears that someone at the University smells revenue from this whole
thing, and there is some deal with a commercial registration house in the
offing.

Bottom line, it's all happening behind closed doors and definitely not
according to the ICANN/IANA guidelines.

For these reasons, I applaud Mike Lawrie's efforts to keep this think honest.

Reminds me of the good old days.... sigh

I remember getting my first sub domain. I sent an email to a guy at the local university, he added me to the zone, no worries. Everything was so much better before .com

I don't know the rules but...

I am not familiar with ICANN's rules for transferring control of high level domains like this however I think a logical solution might be something like follows.

I read that something like 5 of the 6 DNS servers that the SA government runs are barely operable and in some way they're lacking the technical know-how etc to do this, however couldn't Lawrie assign control of several lower level domains like .gov.za and .mil.za, etc to units of the South African government that would like to be considered as potential managers of the .za zone eventually? This would allow these ministries to hone their skills and upgrade their hosting, to allow them to actually contend with the workload required to maintain the levels beneath .za without compromising the integrity of .za.

I'm sure Lawrie has done a fine job like many other ICANN endorsed root zone administrators. I for one agree with the subjegation of world governments to ICANN's standards in these matters, rules like this in situations like these can do much to keep these Banana Republics functioning in spite of whatever stranglehold their would-be dictators impose on local resources.

I would put forth that if Mr. Lawrie made arrangements similar to those above, and if the government of SA can administer their own zones under .za, that there isn't much that he could do to endanger the infrastructure there. He could get hit by that bus and traffic to and from SA zones like .com, .gov, and .mil would still arrive at the intended destination until ICANN assigned another administrator to replace him.

Anyway, what do I know about DNS?

Kind of

Simply moving the zone files dosn't cause a problem, but if two people try to serve the same TLD it does. Which is what might happen if the government tries to regain control of .za unilateraly.

Re:Lesotho?

...how are we going to route packets to Lesotho? This country is completely surrounded by South Africa!

Satellite

Re:Lesotho?

How about Transmission of IP Datagrams on Avian Carriers

That'd never work - with rampant poverty in SA, your datagrams will be eaten by starving africans.

Re:South Africa

The problem is compounded by the governments refusal to accept the scientificaly proven details of the disease. Because of this, treatment and education has been severely hampered. In addition, the price of the drugs for treatment (I know it's not a cure) cost several times the average annual income for a single month's supply.

Even if it's impossible to cure those who are infected (which will be the case as long as some genetic cure, a'la Star Trek, is not found), it's vital to reduce the rate of infection. This isn't happening (because of ignorance and government stupidity). So the future of Africa, not just South Africa, is massive depopulation of the continent. This is beyond sad.

I know I'm off topic. I don't care.

Which monkeys?

I assume you must be referring to the white racist monkeys who came up with the plan to deprive tens of millions of blacks of an education. Talk about reaping what you sow.