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:If not the government?

[Disevidence]

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?

[Disevidence]

Yeah and the root name servers are controlled by ICANN, the people who endorse the administrator.

So to get the name servers to point elsewhere they would have to lobby ICANN, but since ICANN are supporting this guy, its unlikely.

Re:If not the government?

[MindStalker]

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:Not the right answer.

[Yorrike]

Why is everyone convinced that Mike Lawrie could go stark raving mad at any moment? If he starts fucking around with the .za domain, ICANN will take measures to ensure network integrity. But I doubt he's going to turn evil all of a sudden and destroy the (I assume) respect he's bulit up with the South Afrian internet community.

It's time everyone gives up the "what if he goes crazy or dies" argument - The .za domain is controlled by a skilled, intelligent, level headed individual. Get over it. If governments can't even get tax returns correct, then there's no fucking way they'll be competent controlling a TLD.

Current nslookup info for .za

[rootlocus]

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

Re:So?

[Grit]

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:Responsible

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, there is Mike's own FAQ for the increasing number of journalists who phone him at

http://www2.frd.ac.za/uninet/dns_faq.txt

Admittedly a partial viewpoint, but I think Mike is one of the few voices that make sense in this whole hoohaw.

The report on the morning national news in SA screwed up completely, with "Mike Lawrie threatens to crash the ZA Internet!!!". Although it isn't like Mike, I hope he gets to rattle the legal-action sabre and get some apologies from the nitwit collectives in government and government-sponsored-journalism

Re:If not the government?

[Twylite]

PLEASE try to get a clue. The bill provides for a non-profit company to be created to administer the .za namespace. The miniter gets to nominate some of the board. The government's concern is to ensure that namespace policy follows SA policy and law.

For those of us who have to deal with the SA registrars, this is a good thing, though not many realise it. Mike Lawrie's behaviour is quite typical of techies who think they run the place. There have been several "domain snatches" by administrative contacts of .za sub-domains (third-level), and the entity who really owns the domain cannot get it back because the dispute resolution policies of most registrars are "transfers only with the permission of the administrative contact".

So if you are a non-profit organisation which has registered a .org.za domain, and you're admin contact decides to "defect", you're fucked. Have a nice day, say goodbye to your domain. And unless you're a section 21 company and can take the matter to court, you're never going to see it back.

This is the sort of bullshit the current registrars cause, because there is not a sufficient policy framework backed by SA law ... and the sort of bullshit the bill will clear up.

Re:If not the government?

[Twylite]

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.