Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
.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.
The government is seeking control of the
Think nothing is impossible? Try slamming a revolving door.
Direct Quote from Mav[LAG] #31387 in responce to the same question the last time this was brought up on slashdot explains it best. .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). .za will lead to some kind of new era of Internet prosperity where all people in our country will suddenly get Internet access.
.za suddenly goes dark for a few days because of some technical or beauracratic cock-up, our economy will suffer enormously.
No one here in South Africa minds who controls
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
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
* 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.