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."

Comments

Re:See, here is the problem...

[Twylite]

Ok ... YOU, and every other fuckwit who suggests that a government can create its own root servers, or that taking over a ccTLD involves creating its own root servers, or that government has no right to be involved in ccTLD administration ... LISTEN UP.

4.1 The delegee of a ccTLD is a trustee for the delegated domain, and has a duty to serve the residents of the relevant country or territory in the context of ISO 3166-1, as well as the global Internet community (as that term is interpreted in the Preamble to this document). Its policy role should be distinguished from the management, administration and marketing of the ccTLD. These functions may be performed by the same or different entities. However the delegation itself cannot be sub-contracted, sub-licensed or otherwise traded without the agreement of the relevant government or public authority and ICANN.

You can read "Principles for Delegation and Administration of ccTLDs" on ICANN's site.

RFC-1591 and IANA don't apply - the RFC washes its hands of ccTLD determination and administration, placing the determination in ISO's hands, and ignoring policy issues.

Because the (old) government was not interested in DNS at the time, and ICANN wasn't even around, Mike Lawrie was given the job of managing the .za namespace. He has never received government sanction for this. He never even received industry sanction, because there was only an academic network at the time he started managing the namespace.