South African Internet Blackout?

MdeGale writes "A tussle for control of the .za domain has sparked the possibility of a blackout for all .za sites. This article in the Independent online reports that Mike Lawrie -- the administrator of the ".za" domain -- would: 'have no alternative but to pull the plug on millions of email addresses and Internet sites if parliament passed the controversial Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill this week.' There is an excellent breakdown of the background situation at Politech. Basically the SA government wants to regulate the domain (and take over administering it). The Bill -- due to be passed this week -- would make this law, without Lawrie's agreement to the redelegation, as per ICANN practice."

Comments

the large issue...

[digitalmuse]

I openly admit that I do not fully understand all the issues which Mr. Lawrie is trying to address in his push to ensure that there is a capable, competent, lawful management of the .za TLD going forward. However, I have to ask what kind of response we would see from ICANN... Are we looking at a complete backout of .za? Will this be an across-the-board version of the Usenet Death Penalty or just saber-rattling and name-calling among those involved.
From what we have seen here, it does appear that the South-African Department of Communication has it's head in it's arse, but as an arm of the government, it may be impossible to prevent them from the heavy-handed actions they appear to have endorsed with the Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill.
Does anyone have any information on what the ICANN (or anyone else for that matter...) is saying/thinking/doing about this? I for one would be very interested in this. how often do you get to watch a pissing match over a TLD... the mind recoils in horror.

Re:the large issue...

[jonadab]

> However, I have to ask what kind of response > we would see from ICANN... Are we looking at > a complete backout of .za? Will this be an > across-the-board version of the Usenet Death > Penalty

Nothing quite so dramatic as that. If ICANN does not approve of the change, the root nameservers simply won't change the way they delegate the .za domain. Remember, in terms of toplevel domains, if ICANN doesn't say that you are the authority, your authority is meaningless. The South African government can set up its new .za domain servers and declare them to be authoritative, and set up as many committees as it wants to manage them, but if the ICANN nameservers delegate .za elsewhere, then every name lookup in the world will look elsewhere for .za domains. In particular, everyone will continue to use the existing servers managed by the current administrator, as long as ICANN continues to delegate to them and they continue to function.

Therein lies the problem...

The only serious danger to continued functioning of the internet in South Africa (and this is a very real possibility) would be if the government legally forced the current .za administrator to shut down the existing nameservers. In that case, all name lookups in the .za domain would fail, until he turned them back on or ICANN delegated to a new administrator.

Probably the people who drafted the legislation believe that they can force ICANN to delegate to their new official servers, but ICANN says they will not delegate to technically incompetent administrators, and there is reason to believe them.

Note that everything else internet-related in South Africa would continue to work, except for domain name lookups. Anything you can do with just IP addresses would still work. Web servers would still work, but could not be accessed using domain names. (You could use the IP numbers, if you know them.) In a pinch, you could probably even still exchange email, but it would be problematic for non-technical users because there would be no way to determine the correct mail server from a domain-based email address. So you would have to know the IP address of the mail server in question. Et cetera.

grand domain grabbing scheme

[cheezus]

i want to register piz.za, and then then sell subdomains, so the world would have

dominos.piz.za

et al.

What about za.net and za.org?

[Domini]

Go to ZA.NET and check out their page.

If the goverment wants to take control of it, then let them!

People will just move somewhere else, leaving a dead zone.

It will be sad to lose my domains:

e.co.za and tbs.co.za though.

-sigh-

Re:Yea and...???

[skaffen42]

You are missing the point here. This is a typical example of uninformed (and hopefully unenforceable) legislation that governments think up when they feel they are losing control of something. Read some of the background information on this case and you will realize how absurd the legislation is. For example you would not be able to change sub-domains to .za domain without government approval. Let's say you owned bar.za and wanted to create a sub domain foo.bar.za. According to the legislation you couldn't do it without approval. In the case of the South African government this is simply a continuation of their complete disregard of how things work in the real world. Read up on their South Africa's interesting policies on Aids (http://www.usatoday.com/news/healthscience/health / ids/2002-05-01-safrica-policy.htm) and you will see what I mean.

Your juris, my di.....

[Bollie]

I may be totally out of line here, but is the .za TLD under the jurisdiction of the banana^H^H^H^H^H^H South African law? Aren't they now passing laws over something which they have absolutely no control, like the guys selling real-estate on the moon?

It wouldn't be the last if it is. Next time I bet they'll declare insulting the President illegal... oh wait, no! Don't arrest me! It was a jo... NO CARRIER

Re:Yea and...???

[palfreman]

You don't know what you are talking about and have obviously never administerd a DNS domain.

DNS is a distrubuted database lookup service. It doesn't belong to any country and doesn't have any status other than being more conveniant than aaa.bbb.ccc.ddd numbers. Anyone can, and people sometimes do, set a DNS root or a TLD.

It required the co-operation of other DNS administrators around the world (and not just in a titchy little backwater like South Africa) for the information about what hostname equals what number to be meaningful. It is not some farm on the veld that can be seized by a bunch of rent-seeking criminals - .za is not propertery.

Just because it looks like it could be grabbed does not actually mean it can be, not least because you have people like me in other countries who just won't accept that kind of abusive behavior - and without our support it is useless to you.

Start doing things properly of be cut off: a lesson for the whole of Southern Africa IMO.

Re:Yea and...???

[Vuarnet]

Hello? It's their alpha COUNTRY CODE. Yes, they are entitled to it. It's a computer-age born national symbol. They can do what they want with it, just like they can do what they want with their numeric telephone Country Code.

Well, now, I always thought that ICANN was the organization in charge of creating TLDs and delegating responsability and management. The South African government may whine all they want and police every Internet conection inside their country if they wish, but the point is that sooner or later they have to connect to the outside world. They don't have any "unalienable rights" to have a connection to the rest of the world, as far as I can remember.

And it's that kind of connections which is supposed to be regulated by ICANN, in some kind of consensus, through the use of TLDs. So I don't see why the government should get in the way of someone who is working for his country, doing a heck of a good job (from what I can tell) for free, just so they can charge their own citizens for something they (the gov'ment) did not create or implement.

Maybe I haven't got the ICANN thing quite right yet, but I'm sure as hell against any government messing with something just because they can.

Re:Zaire != "South Africa"

[Bollie]

1. We grow bananas here. Besides, I did backspace over that stuff!
2. Someone seems to have confused Zaire with .za

Sorry to debunk you, but hey, this just proves stupidity is not limited to this country.

'nuff said.

it seems to me

[Forward The Light Br]

that we would be crying bloody murder if IANA cum ICAAN were to decide that the US government no longer had control over .us and instead by fiat gave gov.us to Grand Old Vines of Napa CA...

throwing out the "white man's burden" of taking care of .za so the "silly ignorant government of South Africa" doesn't screw it up seems quite ass-backwards... If they do fuck it up, fine. So be it. We decided that ccTLDs would exist. They should exist equally and COUNTRIES should have control over their own ccTLDs...