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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'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!
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.
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The real beef is that governments are historically less speedy in providing the services required, but this should not prevent any government from having regulatory authority over the naming and addressing of the internet within its own borders.
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-Tim
A South African.
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I dont like the idea of potentially putting a company out of business because of governemental involvement, but some of the proposed regulatory changes will have to happen at some point in the future, in many places in the world.
Q?: Why should ICANN have a whip over the internet naming of an entire country? ICANN should recognise the regulations of govermental regulation of its namespace.
I think you didn't read the article.
.za domain name came up, way back at the beginning. However, he doesn't want to give control to the government without them following ICANN procedures. The law would simply make his administration of the domain illegal.
There is one person (a south african, not foreign) running the domain right now, not any sort of committee. He has stated that he does not want to continue running it, sice he's been doing it for years without getting paid for it. He is running it basically because he was around when the opportunity to have a
I also did not take the comment about guns as a statement about south africa. Every government in the world has guns, and very few seem overly afraid to use them. In fact, there's not a country in the world that the statement "the government, of course, has men with guns" would not apply to. I think this statement certainly wouldn't be out of context if used on, e.g. America.
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.
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
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Specifically they want to replace the non-profit organisation Namespace (whom Mike Lawrie consults to) with a huge unwieldy bureaucracy that will cost the taxpayers millions and is overseen by the Communications Minister. In other words, a simple administrative function that has been performed superbly by a single highly-competent individual over the last decade will now be replaced by an eighteen person board of directors whose salary bill alone is millions per year. Not only that but the Government's spin on the whole debacle is that they are imposing some form of democracy on the current evil monopoly that Mike Lawrie has subjected us all to.
This is complete bullshit. Mike Lawrie and Namespace have repeatedly tried to get the Government involved in ccTLD administration with no success for many years now. The Department of Communications, led by two politicians whose only qualities seem to be an equal balance of power hungriness, greed and incompetence (Ivy and Andile - yes, this means you two) say that Government control over
A few facts are in order.
And yes, as a South African journalist who's been following this saga for quite some time, I don't mind saying that I'm really pissed off.
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.