Slashdot Mirror
South Africa Wants Control of .za
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.
I don't think the south african government should be in control of anything right now. They have a lot of fixing to do.
Who should, rightfully, get control of a country's top-level names? I have no doubt that Mr. Lawrie has done a good job, and for years with no pay at that, but he also isn't the one who built the infrastructure. I am not convinced that the government is always the best administrator, but why is looking to an undemocratic, unrepresentative corporation like ICANN any better?
Why does South Africa have .za?
Last I checked, there's no Z in South Africa, and don't they speak english down there?
~q of course http://www.contre.org
~q of course
contre.org. fighting crime since 1985.
Yeah, i was wondering why they are so intent on getting this domain name in the first place.
South Africa is in the process of nationalisation of many industries, basically anything that involves money, but considering most of the government spent their past as Marxist insurgents it's hardly a surprise, but it's more about redistribution than a social democratic agenda.
.za is just the tip of the iceburg to be honest.
The
Anybody who watches South Africa will know that behind the goody-goody new-age liberal fasard of the ANC is a corrupt and incompetent government. Actions like this are 2 a penny in South Africa today, just we don't usally hear about it because
1) the media has a love affair with the ANC and doesn't want to say ill of it
2) African news is usually only reported if it features disease, war or a lack of food.
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!
ICANN better get used to situations like this. Putting up an electronic embargo around a domain name should never be an option for ICANN. What are they going to do next, pull China's TLD because of human rights abuse?
/. job to tell another country what formal process to use in administering their TLD. I don't care what RFC exists that dictates this, it means nothing. Honestly, to the people involved in this who are so upset they were not consulted...blah..blah..blah: Get over yourselves.
First of, this is a democratically elected government with a formal bill making process, all of which has been followed. It's not ICANN or the readers of
This sort of political manuvering happens everyday in large corporations. Threatening to cause a blackout if the bill is passed only proves their point. I also have to say, I find it insane currently this has been done by one unpaid party with no formal/legal binding to the country. What if this Mike Lawerence guy was smacked by a bus? Who's his backup? Who knows what he knows?
And so they started their own redelgation process, but the DoC Sun Tzu'd them and came at them with the sun behind their back. Who cares, give it to the Gov't. It's theirs anyhow. They'll figure it out. If they spend 12million (whatever currency) on it, you have something to campaign with when you go for the Chairmens job. That's the way it works.
Stop acting like the dorky network administer who's pissed off his little department LAN has been absorbed by Corp IT, and he's no longer _GOD_.
You can't define something by what it's not.
"I don't know that atheists should be considered citizens, nor should they be considered patriots." - George Bush
I'm lost... a country wants its top-level domain back... what does this have to do with "liberal" this and "corrupt" that? Give them their domain and sit down the hell down. You people try to maintain some sort of justification for doing something wrong because of the EVILness of the other side. Get over yourselves.
ICANN is outdated, we have slowly come to realise that. The South African government, olong with many other world governments is just not fit to administrate a top-level domain.
Generally, democracy has worked when dealing with internet regulation. any way to bring a democratic solution to this?
Also, although south africa has guns, ICANN has the backing of the people who control the equipment (DNS servers...)
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
And then you read something like this where people have lost complete common sense. What the fuck is happening these days?
You've also got fungi ang protista, actually. And those are just your eukariota. Can't forget the prokariota, where we keep all the bacteria.
Linux is not based off of BSD!! It was based on minix. Spread your lies else were.
I suspect these little quarrels between ICANN, South Africa, and other groups are harbingers of major DNS conflicts in the future. For example, what if Microsoft, instead of South Africa, demanded a particular TLD?
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.
Okay, lets look at this in another light.
A country passes legislation that it's elected goverment should have control of its internet policy, and not a quasi-goverment 'board' of unelected officials.
Is it right for ICANN to mandate things upon an elected goverment? Is it right for an elected goverment to mandate things on ICANN?
These are issues that need to be adressed, this is just an issue of a goverment wanting to 'control the internet'. South africa do have a bad history of being controled by foreign commities after all.
I also find it mildly offensive that the Slashdot edditors automaticaly assosiate South Africa with Gun Toating Totalitarianism.
The more chaos the better.. one day piz.za will be mine.
Well, incase everyone didn't already know icann sux, if the whole world (not likely) would point to a better root zone that plays fair, ppl would control the internet, instead of big companies. Here's the howto....
Don't nations worldwide have control over how their physical locations are addressed? Why would it make sense that ICANN or any other entity would have control over virtual addresses that want to affiliate with their physical location?
Top level domains should obviously be controlled and administered by the government of the country they represent. The .za domain is the zone of an entire country. The name registrar is therefore a monopoly of services, and all monopolies should be regulated. The government should delegate management to a (private) organisation that is able to provide the quality services that are required. If that company does not provide the services, then the government should choose a different company.
Thats the same as the US government not having regulatory control over their own airwaves/airspace. Crazy.
---
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.
---
-Tim
A South African.
---
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.
They didn't do that. They just stated that the South African government, like all governments, has the power to back up their requests with force. There is not a single government on Earth that doesn't have "men with guns".
---- El diablo esta en mis pantalones! Mire, mire!
nah let's not get into that one ;-)
+----------------- | What is the question!
probably from dutch - zuid-afrika ... sa already taken (?)
you don't know from fun!! this is responsible!!!
--fetch daddy's blue fright wig, i must be handsome when i release my rage
It's pretty obvious that the South African government is incompetent in this matter. Next thing you know they'll be running their social security DB off of Microsoft .NET Passport!
are either of those sentences? I'll let it slide though because of the "chambraigne" sig though.
it's not the pagans that spell them daemons, vampyres and magick .... it's a goth affectation
I think the admin should leave the country, a government this irrational is likely to blame him when they take over and find either that they've been unplugged from the root or that their attempts to do well meaning but wrong things will have the same effect.
Tech Public Policy stuff
I thought the ccTLD's weren't administered by ICANN. Did they grab control at some point? I remember them trying to do so.
-1, Too Many Layers Of Abstraction
ZA is the ISO 3166-1-alpha-2 designation for South Africa.
It is from the Dutch, Zuid Afrika
SA is Saudi Arabia
LOL :).
You take it by the wrong side !
:
It's a lot simpler
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.
Now, is that good ? That's ANOTHER question...
The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance.
A: It's very simple :
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...
The Price of Freedom is Eternal Vigilance.
> We fight the communists
>
And the communists kicked your ass.
Silly boneheads.
DNS is merely a directory that applications consult. There is nothing cast in stone about ICANN's choices, or a government's. Only the users' settings matter. The user selects a server, and the server selects its root server(s). It's a hierarchy of trust up to "."
.com, .org, and other TLDs too. The problem is that most end users don't know how to choose anything but what their ISP tells them. And there has been no reason to "fork the root" yet. A few non-ICANN domains exist, but they're not widely accepted yet.
So if the South African government and ICANN don't agree, then each DNS administrator (at least for the main root nodes that others consider authoritative) around the world, or for that matter each non-root DNS server operator who knows how, can select whichever ".za" TLD server they prefer. The government can run one, and the incumbent can run one. Frankly, it is more important what John Sidgemore thinks, because he runs the largest backbone ISP. ICANN exists because Bernie Ebbers before, and John now, let it. My guess is that ICANN would not advise the server operators to obey a government over itself. Operators within South Africa might have to, but the rest of the world is not subject to that jurisdiction.
Likewise, if users don't like ICANN, they can move to a different DNS for
In any case, there's dick all ICANN can do about it. The guy in question could hand over control of .za to the South African government. The South African government could then break every ICANN rule there is. What's ICANN going to do about it? Nothing. What's the US gov't going to do? Nothing.
This has more to do with the guy than it does with ICANN. The guy just said that he likes the ICANN rules, but ICANN is not forcing anything here.
Why should the government or indeed anyone in South Africa claim right to a convention that is used by the entire world to simply refer to them?
.za belongs to every single entity on the internet (using the current domain name system) because it is there to serve us as a reference to South Africa.
.za'. Is this actually an issue?
.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.
fuck icann, fuck america, power to the people!!! the usa controls *everything*! nough said.
It's not like all the possible extensions are used up. If an island with a few hundred people can have its own TLD, why not let South Africa be associated with two, the current .za for people who don't want to go through a corrupt government monopoly, and something appropriate for those who want to show pride in their government by using a domain it controls?
That said, if this dispute can be used to help destroy ICANN, that should be encouraged.
___
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
Just to inform all those misinformed people. South Africa is predominatly encompassed by people of the white pigment not black. But if you insist on calling someone black a "nigger" you can take your comments to www.kkk.com or some place that deals with derogitory, spiteful comments. I have always believed slashdot to be openminded and I still believe it to be. So before you go off ranting about "nigger control" and other racists remarks dealing with a government and country that is mostly white, do a little research so you don't look uneducated. I do not accept racists and I would like to believe that most of the slashdot community does not accept them either.
.uk. However, I believe some legislation needs to be done in the ICANN in order to keep things under control so one government does not get bent-out-of-shape because they lack control of what is thought to be, in essence but not in actuality, theirs.
Now for the topic at hand. I would like to believe that if a country has a direct relation to a domain name that they would be in control of it. Similar to
The internet is supposed to be a free community and strong arm tactics from anyside should not be tolerated.
What do other people think?
~Char Lander
Brothers and sisters I have none, but this mans father is my fathers son
But shouldn't the GOVERNMENT of South Africa decide who controls the .za domain rather than some unelected corporation in the USA ? Who appointed the USA supreme rulers of the Internet anyway ? It seems to me that ICANN is always getting into disputes over this sort of thing. If they cannot perform their functions in a less confrontational manner, perhaps its time we handed control back to where it used to be.
Whoever owns the root name servers should control the delegation of all the top-level domains. Period.
[ home ]
Ah. But who makes the classifications?
I use Yahoo or search Google to get to sites anymore. The domain name itself matters less and less, so who care who has .za or .pizza for that matter.
Speaking of misinformed... South Africa is not "predominately encompassed by people of the white pigment". Please don't think that I'm trying to make this a racial thing, because I'm not. South Africa is controlled by the white minority... get your facts straight.
You are both wrong. South Africa has always been black majority. For several years now, it has been controlled by black rulers. You probably weren't even on the Internet the last time whites ruled it.
The govt. has a reason to be concerned.
.SA( if it's free) then encourage (using incentives & not laws) South Africans to use that namespace instead?
International bodies, usually have no accountability (look at FIFA, imagine corruption at the Hague) in this case some rogue might take over the namespace admin. duties (not likely but possible). However, some of the reasons the govt. gives are suspicious.
They claim this will improve ecommerce, but how does Mike Lawrie's work so far impede ecommerce?
Secondly, if one man has done the job for free up to this point, why do they need a group of full-time paid staff (+ 3 part-time) with a big budget unless they have some hidden agenda?
If this is a democratic govt. why didn't they consult with the relevant bodies e.g ICANN & Lawrie himself?
Why don't they just register another domain namespace e.g
One gets the feeling there's more going on behind the scenes. A little more truth could go along way.
I want control over girlfriend but it just isnt going to happen
From the state department, 1999:
..."
"1. Population: Roughly 41.2 million. Racial composition: 76.3%
Black; 13.7% White; 8.5% Colored (mixed race) and 3% Asian. The
population growth rate in 1995 was 1.9%."
From "The Guardian" in the UK:
"When Nelson Mandela took over as president of South Africa in 1994
(Nelson Mandela was the first Black ruler of South Africa. His successor was Black also. Clearly, South African whites are a small majority, and always have been. The country has been black-ruled since 1994. That's 8 years. Time to get up to date with international affairs)
More and more, the ignorant people are taking control of the internet.
We in Canada are very happy to drain skilled professionals and talented workers fleeing from the developing, collapsing, and stagnant countries of the world to replace our skilled professionals and talented workers fleeing our crushing load of over-regulation and tax to the greener pastures of the USA.
We can always use more high tax payers that the USA won't let in.
Who gave ICANN the say so over this? The South African government wanting control over the .za domain seems to me to be less of an issue than ICANN wanting control over the . zone.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Anyone who wants to manage an internet namespace (.ZA in this case) has three choices. (1) Overthrow ICANN, (1) Work within ICANN's rules, or (3) Ignore ICANN.
.ZA administrator would be happy to unload this unpaid job he's doing. Heck, buy it from him for $1.
.ZA does not exist outside South Africa's physical borders.
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
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
I was just listening to Strikeforce today. I also recommend listening to Firepower. Ian Stuart won't be forgotten!
The internet does *not* belong to the US government. You can say it many times but it doesn't make it true.
The US government does not own even a controlling interest in the infrastructure. The US government does not own the root nameservers.
At one point the US millitary owned the internet, as soon as they allowed others to connect at will they gave it up. The US does not own the networks of those they allowed to connect, nor does it own the networks who connect to the networks they allowed to connect, at nauseum.
The internet is owned by humanity. The namespace for a country should belong to that country for without that country why have the namespace?
-- iCEBaLM
I guess this just proves once more that when it comes to internet law and politics one's assumptions about the obvious are rarely correct.
it's "oversight", not "oversite". "borders", not "boarders". Some grammatical improvements wouldn't be a Bad Thing, either.
First of all, control of the 'internet' has zero to do with control of namespaces. Let's say, for example, that all of a sudden, my domain, 'neverending.org' became suddenly popular, and everyone wanted a third-level domain under it. So, to help the situation, I divy up the namespace into country-codes, so there is us.neverending.org, ca.neverending.org, za.neverending.org, and so on. Now why in the world should I be forced to let the South African government control za.neverending.org?
ICANN owns/runs very top level namespace. It created it. Why should it be told what to do by a foreign government? Artificial namespaces, such as the domain namespaces, aren't owned by humanity, they are owned by whoever created them.
As has been observed before, ZA is the abbreviation for 'Zuid Afrika', 'Zuid' being an Afrikaans word, very closely related to 'Süd' in my native language, meaning 'south' in english. As the people that speak Afrikaans, a dutch dialect to my knowledge, are no longer in control of what remains of the territory of the former RSA, it should follow naturally that what remains of the RSA today, can not lay any cultural claim to the .ZA domain. Now one might argue that the colored are the 'legal' inheritors of the former RSA. This issue can however be quickly put the test and resolved as such a matter of inheritance would have to be judged against the standards of law, law practice as well as cultural standards of the former RSA, which I'm sure would not allow for colored ownership of the .za domain. It is the logical conclusion, that if at all, such a domain could only be turned over to a organization of Afrikaans speaking people whose purpose is to reenstate the former RSA.
On more humorous, albeit to a large degree valid reason, why the domain can not be turned over is what a South African friend of mine told me when I asked him about why there were so many rules and strictures to control the coloreds... He replied, 'it's simply because they have no brains, they just don't have any brains'.
Each country's top-level domain is supposed to correspond to ISO 3166 country codes. To issue a new TLD to a country other than the correct ISO code would break the current system.
This would have to be a minor limitation, tho, and your suggestion should still be possible.
You and anybody like you are a fucken idiot !
By your argument, the guy who made the first telphone should control all the telephone numbers in the world.
After some further reading, it seems that IANA's policy is to only issue TLDs for countries listed in the ISO 3166 country list, so a new TLD would not be allowed.
.JP, .CA, and .AU.
On the same page, you can also see some other applications for redelegation such as
Men with guns? South Africa is not Zimbabwe. While the president can get away with much, he most do so within the framework of the South African constitution, which is one of, if not the, strongest constitution in the world. Meaning that while the president can state that he does not recognize any connection between AIDS and HIV, he could not use force as a means of acquiring the .za domain. It is just as likely there as in Sweden, England or whichever European country you'd like.
America, however, is another matter... THAT would not come as a surprise...
Sorry, but those aren't equivelant statements.
"You can't define something by what it is not" gives no information about how to define something. If X!=0, what is X? Of course, that's the point you're trying to make with this statement in the first place. Paradoxical, no?
"You can only define something by what it is" does in fact imply your first statement, but the first doesn't imply the second. Since you seem to know so much about how school works, you'd probably feel right at home if you spent some more time there yourself, preferably taking logic or rigorous theoretical math courses.
Please mod parent up, insightful.
the government, of course, has men with guns, so it's not like he's going to win in the end
The solution is obvious. The good people of the country of South Africa must have the right to bear arms!
Thank you.
======
Get your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape!
To dispell a few myths(at the risk of being called redundant but it seems necessary given the level of knowledge here about places not big in the news): South Africa has a white minority of some 6 million people in a country of about 42 million, the rest being mostly black of various tribes, with about 3 million of mixed race and about 1 million asians. It's pretty varied culturally and worth a visit. It was ruled by the white minority for most of it'S political history and started changing after 1989 with the ending of racialy biased laws. It had it's first truly democratic elections in 1994 which the current government, the ANC won.
.za domain seems to be one of those things. Basically it seems as if they are trying to make the admin of the TLD *and* registrations more available to the majority of the population which is very poor and has no internet access. While I applaud this, I think they're going about it in the wrong manner and at the wrong place. Having control of the TLD isn't going to give anybody DSL or even Dial-Up overnight and even if they had the access, they still wouldn't have the computers. My guess is that this is going to end up in a bureaucratic, corrupt mess that some other government will have to sort out in the future. But you never know.
It has had a lot of ups and downs and has a horrific crime rate and a lot of problems, but, in general, it has done a lot better than many whites predicted(myself included). It has won a major legal struggle against international drug companies in it's efforts to legally produce cheap , generic anti-AIDS drugs.
One of it's unsolved problems is that the government is new in historical terms and tends to do things in ridiculously bureaucratic ways. This messing with the
I used to have one. My mother has one. etc. But guns have very little to do with TLD administration in case you didn't notice.
yeah, if they were smart they'd name the nation just to get the .sex domain. Actually, that makes me think of a whole new way to get TLDs: declare small republics, get international recognition and new Tlds. "Peoples Optimised Republic of Nyland", "African Democracy Under Leaders of Trouble"...
You got that right, brother.
To quote David Allen Coe, "There's nothing quite as worthless as a white girl with a nigger."
Hey if you want an animal with a big cock why don't you fuck a horse? At least you won't get pregnant unlike those niggers who have been tinkered by Zionist geneticists in hopes of diluting the blood of white people to make Mexicans.
All elected officials know how to do is make more and more and more laws and run for re-election.
KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT!!!!!
They pass laws declaring that the value for Pi is 4. They pass laws declaring that you have to have a man walking in from of you automobile with a red flag warning people.
KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT!!!!!
And they never have expiration dates on these laws so these gems of tryumphs of political maneuvering over common sense or even the laws of physics.
You're stuck with them forever.
Any law that hasn't seen anyone charged in four years should be eliminated.
Any ex-lawyer politician who propoosed a bill that was made into law that has never seen anyone charged should be eliminated along with the law.
Kiss your political ass/baby-kissing career goodbye you tax-fattened hyena.)
KEEP THE GOVERNMENT OUT!!!!!
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
The hell with Prozac and making pharmaceuticals even richer: they should smoke some those fine African sativas they have there.
If memory serves correctly, the Durban Poison, Swazi 'Rooi Bart' and Transkei Green are some of the best marijuana strains in the world.
Cheaper than Prozac and infinitely safer than
any addictive pharmaceuticals.
Youve been gone from home too long, living in a country where a third of the people are taking some form of prescription happy pills.
zach
I'll see your Zambia and
raise you one Zaire.
I wish I was the global administrator of some stuff!
Nobody could be as 1337 as me, if I was a global administrator of something. I could tell my boss to suck it.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Nigger
Pronunciation: 'ni-g&r
Function: noun
1a: one that nigs b: a tool or machine for nigging.
Common. Lets all grow up now. After all, when was the last time you saw somebody nig?
You need a FREE iPod Nano
How ignorant can you get? Anybody else care to correct Cpt. Hick, because I'm too busy laughing at his oh-so-complete grasp of South African society and politics...
"Yep. Dem darr niggers got themselfs a domain boys! What you think we should doo bout dem?"
"Ping em high!!"
Sigh.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
Yes, Yes, poor men with guns really care about who owns domain names.
Simply jaunt on over to the Erotic Mind Control Story Archive.
Ok, fine; But I had to break the monotony somehow...
Hom much spam can a spammer spam...
*gets hit by stream of oil*
and another thing, stop watching movies, guns don't solve arguments
Provision of names in .za isn't a service such as education or healthcare that a country provides to its citizens; it's merely one part of the vast decentralised database called the DNS. There's nothing "obvious" in saying that any one part of the DNS should be controlled by anyone in particular, other than that it should be controlled by someone competent to do the job (and, by all accounts, the ability to run nameservers competently is not universally believed to be a property of the South African government).
It's difficult to better the way Jon Postel put it in the relevant standards document, RFC 1591 ("Domain Name System Structure and Delegation"), sec 3.2: "These designated authorities are trustees for the delegated domain, and have a duty to serve the community. The designated manager is the trustee of the top-level domain for both the nation, in the case of a country code, and the global Internet community. Concerns about "rights" and "ownership" of domains are inappropriate. It is appropriate to be concerned about "responsibilities" and "service" to the community." (emphasis mine).
GROGGS: alive and well and living in
Firstly, The .za debate is still ongoing, there's a lot that will happen still and hopefully common sense will prevail.
Secondly, I'm frankly not amazed at the kind of total troll bait that's filled up this topic, but what I am shocked about is some white South Africans attitude toward thier country.
The whole attitude of 'everything has gone to shit in the last 10 years'
Well, leave the country then - we don't need your negativity or short-sightedness.
Fact: everything was shit for 80% of the population for 100 years !
Fact: our new government now has to build an infrastructure to support 40 million people as opposed to 3 million 'privileged' whites and you expect it to happen overnight ?
Fact: There was no 'bloody revolution' and as a white South African, you have your patient fellow black South Africans to thank for that - give that some thought.
Yes, we have wide-scale corruption, crime, rape and numerous other problems - we have to fix that somehow. Name me a country without similar problems !
Yes, government is messing up badly on many issues, but heck, at least most people have a fighting chance to succeed these days.
Get over the fact that your a white South African and become just 'a South African' and for gods sake, help make the country work instead of publically degrading it at every opportunity !
We, as South Africa, are, like it not, a roll model for the rest of Africa - if we mess up badly, Africa stays in the dark ages for another 50 years.
As a white South African remember one thing, your living in AFRICA - wake up, this is not 'the colonies' anymore.
A slashdotting - you get the stick first and then the carrot !
This is about as silly as thinking you can control the phone system by controlling the publication of a 'phone directory.
Look at these alternatives. It would be:-
- Quite possible - technically anyway - for South Africa to share the
.sa top-level domain name with Saudi Arabia.
- Not very difficult to re-organise the whole country in a grass roots and ad hoc way as third-level domains under southafrica.com, southafrica.org, and southafrica.net. The root nameservers for the country would then not be in the country and thus not under the juristiction of the Government of South Africa which would then left with only the gov.za domain to worry about. Looking in from afar, it would seen that that might be a very suitable solution.
- Forget about the Domain Name Service altogether. All the good names have gone, and we can just use numbers instead. Try putting http://64.28.67.150/ into your browser location bar window and see what happens - I promise you it's absolutely safe. We all use numbers to make 'phone calls, don't we? Works dosn't it? Also because the vast majority of accesses are off a link in some e-mailed document or off a search engine, the DNS is somewhat irrelevent now anyway.
Just a few thoughts for the Government of the Republic of South Africa to think about before they start getting stroppy with guns etc. name is totallyOkay, all the "right way/wrong way" and political stuff aside, I don't understand one thing:
How does the control over who maintains the domain list affect anyones ability to access the Internet? I'm reading the article as saying that by South Africa maintaining the TLD itself, more people will have better access to the Internet.
Is this change suddelly going to put more computers or network connections in to remote/poor sections of the country?
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
CH is for Switzerland
From the Latin Confederatio Helvetica
If you're looking to block spam from China, CN is code you're looking for.
After all if a web site is on .fr it will msotly searched and looked at by Frenches. Same for .de ,and other country domain name. Should it not then obey the local law since it is to 99% used by locals ? And if so, why should not the govt country handle the domain name ? All I saw as argument is "it isn't done so now" or "ICANN would not let it happen". But nothing about the fact that this domain name will mostly be watched by local people. And if it is used by local people , why should a foreign group have any influence on how it is handled ? Only locals should ahve their say in it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
why are so many geeks such racist losers?
I think I'm the only white South African to have openly posted here and fail to see what was was so racist about my post. A lot of Americans were talking about "Niggers" etc but I didn't see the usual crowd of embittered ex-Rhodesians drop in.
So I would point you to my post "I'm a South African" and ask you to read it again.
Further I should tell you that I think you are exhibiting exactly the problem that is rife in the government: Any criticism and and they start screaming "racists". Amazing how that helps them avoid the onus of having to be accountable for their actions doesn't it?
Yes, i remember how wonderfull NP's economic/infrastructural policies were...
Only thing which worked well were the roads and highways.
I still remember the raging debates against the Governement monopoly on comunications back then...
Current governement has (seriously) screwed up some things, but NP was in no way better (not even close)
As a South African, I find the following quote from the article most distasteful:
"...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.
You know it's kind of tragic We live in the new world But we've lost the magic -- Battery 9 (www.battery9.co.za)
Really ... who cares if the ICANN admin doesn't like the way the South African government goes about taking control of something that represents their country? If the US government wanted to take control of how .us, .com, .net, .org, etc. were administered, we would be yelling at this asshole to give us control or else. This is just another case of a persicnity asshole mucking up the works because his ego is too damn big.
just has one police officer. So it's man with gun instead of men with guns :-)
When did this change over? In old movies the UN ambassador has the nameplate "Great Britain". In news these days, the nameplate says "United Kingdom".
Pathetic inbred farmer. One settler one bullet.
The South African government can declare the name theirs, oust the admin and all that. Then, ICANN can tell the root servers to stop accepting updates from them. The .za domain will the effectively cease to exist to the world. Only DNS admins that specifically add the SA servers to their list of roots will see it.
.sycraft TLD, only people that added my server to their root list (or used it directly) would ever see it.
.za domain if they like, but root servers can refuse to accept updates from them. All the roots except for I and K are located in the US (I is in Stockholm, K is in London). Now since ICANN runs the roots, they make the rules.
The DNS system, and most of the Internet is all about cooperation and following established rules. Noone is forcing yuo, but if you don't you just won't work with anyone else. It's like IP addresses, those are handed out by ARIN, RIPE and the other organisations like them. Well you are free to ignore them if you want. You can program your network equipment to use whatever IP addresses you like, even ones you don't own. However, your upstream provider will refuse to route your traffic if you do. You can run your own little network however you please with whatever addressess you like, but if you want to play on the Internet, you have to use the ones given to you or your traffic won't go anywhere.
It's the same thing with DNS. I run a DNS server and I can do anything I want with it. I can add domain names to it that someone else owns, nothing is stopping me. However, only people that use that DNS server will see my mapping. Everyone else will see the correct mapping. I can also tell it what root servers I want it to search. I am free to add the root servers from an alternate TLD orginisation (there are a couple out there) or even remove the root-servers.net servers entirely. If I wanted, I could even setup a root with my own TLDs. However, this all just affects people that trust and use my DNS. If I were to create a root and add the
So the situation is the same with South Africa. Sure, they "take control" of the
Again, if you don't like the roots, you can move to or create an alternate root authority. Noone is stopping you, however most of us only take the ICANN controled roots as authorative, so we will never see your DNS updates. That's how freedom on the internet works. You are free to ignore the established rules and protocols, and noone will arrest you or anything. However the rest of us are then free to ignore you and your method of doing things.
Well, which TWO letters of "Peoples Optimised Republic of Nyland" and "African Democracy Under Leaders of Trouble" would you like for a ccTLD?
You haven't seen anything yet.
You or your children will go the way white Zimbabweans went.
You gonna die. It is as simple as that.
It is true that south africa has done better than many have predicted. The main reason for this is because the first democratic leader, Mandela, abandoned his previous Marxist leanings and tried to build a new state based on more freedom not less.
The problem is that there are many leaders who were actual Soviet agents (members of the Communist Party). The Soviets were the last colonial leaders in Africa, and they executed hundreds of thousands in Ethiopia (famine) and Angola (anti-independence war). These South African communists favored this mass killing. Hopefully, they will abandon the ideology of hatred and greed and reform like Mandela did.
while driving on government paid for roads, and using the government funded Internet?
If only we could privatize the roads. The Internet is getting more and more public-controlled (privatized) all the time, so this is being reformed.
SA, where apparently the Government does keep out of the law enforcement business.
Ever hear of the old South African government? For centuries, it instituted things like "apartheid" and worse which made things really bad and cause the legacy of the crime we have there now.
....are turning South Africa into a 3rd world, marxist, dictatorship.
One of the very worst bloodiest forms of government in all of history, marxism/socialism, was created by a kooky white guy. Another kooky white guy took his nutty ideas and killed a few million people to make a system based on it. Later kooky white guys from the same country used lies and force to get communism into South Africa. Don't blame the blacks.
(Damn, i wrote a good response, but IE crashed causing me to loose pages of stuff. I'll have to go in pointform.)
.za regisrar should not be able to refuse renewal of a name (eg: a banks address) (a possible method of extortion). Certain businesses need to be regulated. Monopolies need to be regulated because massive abuse is possible.
> Now why in the world should I be forced to let the South African government control za.neverending.org?
If za.neverending.org was a critical infrastructure to every person in a country, then that country should regulate za.neverending.org.
.za is crucial to the naming of the countries websites. People and Business invest money in services that depend on infrastructure. All major disputes will eventually end up in a court of law within a country related to the dispute. ICANN is neither country nor court of law. I cannot sue an opponent in the 'ICANN court of law' because the opponent has no reason to comply. One has to prossocute an opponent in a court of law that the opponent cannot ignore.
As more citizens connect to the net, with the country becoming more dependant on an infrastructure, then it should be regulated. Regulation is there to prevent possible colapse of economies. Auditors should be heavily regulated (anderson), but this does not mean that governemnt departments must audit companies (enron). The governent should mandate through law, the responsibility to other parties (anderson) to prevent situations whereby there is massive economic colapse (enron).
Back to top level name regisrars: the
---
>ICANN owns/runs very top level namespace. It created it. Why should it be told what to do by a foreign government?
Why should some World Post Association (does that exist), have authority to regulate the addressing system within its own country? ICANN exists ONLY for interoperability. Its whip has been that it regulates.
Once you realise this, you can make some forward looking statements:
The US mandated ICANN to regulate the nameservers.
As coutries economies become more internet dependant, they will regulate their namespace. Whats happening in ZA, CA (to a lesser extent) and AU, will happen more often over the next few years.
Countries did not 'vote' for ICANN, therefore they will want more say in who gets to regulate them.
Once this regulation is in place in many countries, the countries might decide to mandate authority over TLD regulation to the UN (for eg), which might then mandate that to some organisation (possibly ICANN?)
ICANNs days are numbered. (They might have quite a few, but the nature of ICANN will change because their origional purpose has already been completed.)
---
ICANN is no court of law that any country recog nises. What legal court of law are ICANN disputes resolved in?
Do you really think that the Brazillian court of law applies in the US? I think not! Countries governements agree to uphold certain reasonable cooperation between their legal systems, but that is because the people of that country want that cooperation.
In the end, people and business will require a legal framework in which they can fight disputes. Since ICANN is no recognisable court, and was not elected by the people, why should any country put its economy in the hands of ICANN? ICANN is not accountable to the people, so why should ICANN have authority overthem!
ICANNs days are numbered.
Sorry but the UK government does not have control of .uk. That is controlled by a non-profit organisation called Nominet, set up originally by Demon Internet (one of the first UK ISPs). And a very good job they do too. As I mentioned in an earlier post, excellent service for only $3.65/year per domain.
Phillip.
PS Not smart playing into the racists hands. The only time I saw the 'n' word was in *your* post because you put it in a +2 post (presumably the post you are replying got modded down out of view, as you should have expected it would have been)
PPS South Africa is not "predominatly encompassed by people of the white pigment not black", as "Black South Africans make up about 70 percent of the country's population of over 44 million people" (ref).
Property for sale in Nice, France
The ccTLDs were an agreement between representatives of various countries and ICANN, in order to split the root namespace according to country, and allow each country a namespace to administer independant of ICANN.
If the .za ccTLD was administered by someone whose dispute resolution policy was "if it has money, it wins", you would be singing a very different tune.
The point is that no one person or organisation has the right or authority to assume control of a ccTLD, where a representative authority exists and is capable of doing the same thing. That authority is the government.
i-name =twylite [http://public.xdi.org/=twylite], see idcommons.net
And do you think ICANN would be so stupid to do that? I hope they do so we can finally get rid of ICANN once and for all.
All country code TLDs should be under the control of the specific country identified. That seems to be the case with many, and maybe most. I think that the government of South Africa has the right to designate who (be it a government department, a corporation, or even an individual) runs the zone, and even specify the policies under which it operates. The fact that some governments already do have that control just makes the case all that much stronger.
What makes you say that any one name space is the correct one? How do you define correct? Is it correct if it's what you think is right? Is it correct just because ICANN runs it?
Been there, done that.
My real point is, however, that if it comes down to two different sources of .za TLD zone data, people will demand to use the officially government sanctioned source, as opposed to the one that the current operator runs. If ICANN fails to use the government one, I predict it will be the final stake through the heart of an organization that should have been terminated years ago.
And yes, I will put the South African government sanctioned .za zone delegation in my root zone as soon as they set one up.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
If this is true, then it does grant some validity to the notion that the country pointed to should be in control of said namespace, but it doesn't convince me fully yet.
No I wouldn't, since I know full well that if I didn't like how ICANN was handling its root nameservers, then I could switch to a different root.
Lincoln's Republican party has less in common with the GOP today than I do with you, which is really saying something, since I'm not a racist, a hypocrite, or an willfully ignorant conservative apparatchik - traits which, perhaps one starts to realize, really go a long way toward defining someone's personality.
There are those who say that because AIDS is so dangerous it is irresponsible for people to raise doubts around it, but I would argue that it is essential for people to question such things precisely because it is so dangerous.
A good source of information on the opinion that HIV does not necessarily cause AIDS can be found here.
Plus, contacting all those other name servers along the way gives your local DNS plenty of information to cache. For instance, say you wanted to lookup "level2.sub.za.". From the previous query, your DNS would already know the IP address for the authoritative name server for "sub.za." and issue only a single request this time.
I think I remeber seeing something in passing that a DNS only caches a name for like 1 to 10 seconds. Is that true?
the .za "top-level" domain name: adminned by a single (competent) individual working without pay. .com, .net and .org: adminning by a corporation (Network Solutions) recently sold (to Verisign) for $21 billion.
the "top-level" domains
how can Network Solutions be worth that much money UNLESS their new owners plan to use its monopoly (in running root nameservers) to set up "toll roads" rather than delivering value.
Perhaps I am too cynical, but since when to governments (politicians) give a hoot about this sort of stuff.
My experience tells me this is what Governments (South Africa in this case) do when they want us (voters) to look the other way while they do some real work (take another snoot-full from the trough).
Just have a small think about you own respective governments "big issues" of the day the last time there was an election (assuming you still get one)
Right, lets clear something up here shall we ?
South Africa is controlled by a democratically elected government comprising a spectrum of different races/religions/whatever. I strongly urge people living outside our borders from commenting on our sociopolitical state until they fully understand the dynamics.
Our country is one of the most beautiful in the world and the massively diverse cultures only add to its splendor. The constant whining has grown tiresome. People always focus on the bad, never the good.
ja well no fine.