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

If not the government?

[autopr0n]

Um, shouldn't the government be in charge of the .za domain name? I mean who do you think should be? some random person who happens to have control at the moment?

Country codes are for countries, and decisions for the countries are made by their governments.

Re:If not the government?

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the UK for instance, Government has no involvement in administrating .uk, Nominet is run as a non-profit in the academic world, I believe part of the (modest) fees they collect go to fund the academic backbone, no business nor government gets in the way.

As for South Africa, their government is intent on controlling anything of value, after five years of pondering they've only just realised that Internet = $$$, hopefully in another few years they'll realise the bubble burst two years ago.

Re:If not the government?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

By the same argument, we should just get rid of presidents and congress and replace them with a simgle highly-competent individual. That will save the taxpayers a lot of money.

Re:If not the government?

[Isofarro]

Isn't it embarassing that the old racist apartheid government looks competent in comparison to the current baboons in power?

To be completely fair, I doubt the apartheid government would have allowed any internet access, because that would break down the created socialogical barriers, and open white South Africa to criticism that could conceivably ignore like the proverbial mushroom in the dark.

There was a lot of censorship during the eighties, so there would have been a very strong argument to prevent the freedom the internet provides from being used by any SA resident.

Re:If not the government?

[hey!]

Governments, at least democratic ones, should be given the chance to f*ck up. When they do, the people can decide it's time to replace them.

The alternative is the idea that a non accountable person or organization is more to be trusted more than a democratically elected government. This is true sometimes, but in the long term its better to let publicly elected officials make policy; implementation can be by farmed out.

It won't be the end fo the world if the South African government screws up the ZA namespace. In the broad spectrum of ways that a government can hurt the economy, this is hardly the most significant. But if people don't start trusting their elected governments with responsibility for making decisions about public infrastructure, then holding them accountable for the results, then they will get a government as infantile as they deserve.

Re:If not the government?

[mav[LAG]]

The bill will set up a section 21 company to control the .za domain. The government won't be doing it, or handing it to the incompetent IT division. They will be dictating policy to a company board.

You have to ask yourself though: what for? Namespace is already a section 21 company (note to non-SA readers: this is your basic non-profit org) with a clear policy of accountability, trusteeship and inclusivity. Anyone with a .za domain can become a member for the measly fee of $2 a year. From section 2.1 of it's policy document:

2.4. The Company, through the board, acts as the 'trustee' of the ZA domain namespace. No 'right' in or 'ownership' of a subdomain of ZA vests in any person or organisation.

This is entirely in line with ICANN's RFC 1591 (now called something else - can't remember right now).

The quotes about prosperity and Internet access are a media fuckup because they are completely out of context. They refer to the bill in general, which provides for better access to the underprivlidged, and recognition of the legal status of Internet communications. The comments do not apply to section X.

They are 100% in context. The Department of Communications has repeatedly stated that section X - control of .za by a Government-appointed and overseen body - is a key part of getting Internet access to all in South Africa. As for whether the bill in general provides for better access to the underprivileged, it's pretty clear that DNS doesn't, I'll let Mike Lawrie's FAQ answer that one:

Q. The government has implied that control by the government of the ZA
domain name system will facilitate bringing the Internet to everyone in
South Africa.

A. That is highly unlikely.

There is nothing about the DNS that provides Internet connectivity.
What is needed to achieve the Minister's noble objectives are a
computer, appropriate software, a telephone or leased data circuit, a
subscription to an ISP service, and some assistance in getting started.
Only then might (might) the issue of a domain name become relevant in
the matter of universal rollout of Internet services.

The "local internet community" you refer to are Namespace ZA, who are: 1. backed by industry interests, who don't want to see their monopoly as registrars threatened or be made to do more work by having to replace their shitty dispute resolution policities with something which is actually fair and legally sound;

Namespace are a proposed section 21 company that has its board elected by its members in a democratic manner in line with the Companies Act, that is open to any citizen and any resident of the country. Details have been open to public (and government) scrutiny for over a year on www.namespace.org.za. Government has repeatedly been invited to participate (for a number of years now) in the administration of the domain name system and has not even bothered to attend meetings.

2. represent a community of mainly technically oriented individuals, who are known to have an anti-government stance when it comes to regulation,

Yeah they do and with good reason. Again, Mike Lawrie says it better than I:

Ask yourself whether the government has a good track record on such things as dealing with AIDS, where the very lives of the population it serves have been used as a political football, and what track record will they have on the domain name system.

and don't really give a shit about apply ZA policy and law to domain ownership.

Erm, ICANN has extraordinarily strict rules about policy and domain ownership. Should these rules have been broken at any time since Mike Lawrie organised us the .za domain (for twas he who first started it), we would have heard by now.
And you're wrong anyway. Namespace and Mike Lawrie are only too keen to construct an open and public method for domain and legal resolution. Read their charter if this is any way unclear.

You didn't need to mention you were a journalist: your complete lack of factual information or the ability to tell media hype from actual evidence make it obvious that you are one.

Heh - you'll have to do better than that. I could just as well ask what some little role-playing twerp from Durban who can't spell or get laid (as described in nauseating detail on your own Web site) is doing commenting on the domain name resolution. You don't even own your own domain :)

Re:If not the government?

[Royster]

Your 'baboon' reference is very offensive.

Democracies have the right to screw up. No sole, unelected individual has the authority to prevent a government from screwing up.

Sometimes its better if a government is allowed to screw up because it often lets the opposition in to have a chance to do better.

Responsible

[Anonymous Coward]

"It would amount to sabotage if he were to disrupt the Internet and he has to realize that he will be held responsible for any disruption," Kekana said.

Well then ! By the government's argument isn't he doing the right thing?

If it is his job to ensure the internet setup in ZA remains stable, and he believes it will make ZA unstable if the government reassigns his job to someone else without first ensuring that the government has the infrastructure to take on this job, then wouldn't it then be his responsibility to take steps to make sure the government could not carry out any destabilizing action?

Just carrying out his job, he is. No?

I wish the news articles on MSNBC weren't so skimpy. Where's the BBC when you need it? Are there any more clearly-written summaries of all this out there?

Not the right answer.

[standards]

Sorry, but the .za domain -should- be in the hands of the South African government... and not under the fully control of an individual citizen who could go off the deep end at any moment. Or get hit by a bus.

So the keys are hidden. What if he DOES get hit by a bus in the next week? THEN what happens???? This is NOT a good situation.

With government ownership and control, the South African government can be responsible for the success or failure of the domain.

The people and institutions in South Africa may thank him for his efforts and may want him to continue to be involved in the domain. However, few of those same people support his tactics.

So?

[autopr0n]

Yes, but what gives him the right? The elected government of south africa should be able to control the .za domain as a matter of course.

If this person wants to change the way the government handles the way the domain is used, he should lobby them that way. Just taking the zone files out of the country isn't going to do anything.

Btw, all south africa needs to do to get around this guy would be to get the root name servers to point somewhere else for .za.

Re:So?

[0x0d0a]

Determining who's in charge of and who should be in charge of South Africa can be quite interesting.

More importantly, ICANN has policy prohibiting involvement with national entities, or making TLD changes at national request. They know that goverments in coups or breakaway states can get an easy legitimization by getting their own TLD. They follow *only* the ISO country code charts. To some degree, this guy is simply following in the same spirit -- keeping the Internet out of national power squabbling, and maintained by the same set of volunteers and computer gurus who have kept the thing working well for ages.

Re:So?

[raju1kabir]

That the South African government "does a good job" with its domain in the eyes of us geeks is NOT a prerequisite for sovereignty.

The ".za" domain name is neither a person nor is it land. Therefore I don't see what sovereignty has to do with anything. If I write a book called "South Africa", does the South African government get to decide who around the world can read it?

Top-level domains are not national property; they are a logical construct brought into and maintained in existence by whoever runs the root servers, for the convenience of internet users. Those who run the root servers have pledged no allegiance or subordination to the South African government.

Large scale alternative DNS

[jesterzog]

Today's Friday where I live, so my slashdot persona is going to be in a more observational and theoretical mode.

I don't like the way ICANN presently works, but it seems a bit wrong for any government to decide it wants to usurp something independent that lots of others have devoted so much hard work and effort towards, just because it's successful. (On the other hand, I know this happens all the time.) I also don't have a whole lot of respect for the current South African government.

The ideal way for a government to deal with something like this in theory would be to set up its own DNS system in competition that's administered by the government under its own terms. Then it would try to convince people and ISP's, both in SA and everywhere else, to use it instead of the ICANN-authorised one. The biggest problem with doing this is that it could turn out to be risky if not completely impractical. There will probably always be people who will never allow anything other than ICANN to reach their users.

There have been lots of attempts at alternative DNS's set up against ICANN, but most haven't been incredibly successful scale-wise. Most of them haven't had a major organisation or government behind them, though. With the extra resources available though, is it technically feasible that a country could do something like set up an alternative DNS that people would trust if it chose to?

See, here is the problem...

[Qwerpafw]

OK. Right now .za is effectively controlled, along with everything else, by ICANN. And the problem in this case is that ICANN see fit to delegate this responsibility to a particular individual.

That may be good, that may be bad. Actually in this case it is good, because this guy has done a great job for quite a while (and for free), while south africa has royally fscked things up in their own country quite a bit. Furthermore, this guy is a good guy. He has been asking for someone to take the job off his hands for a while. And south africa are being jerks. The fogeys in the gov't decided to make this man's actions illegal, by means of passing a law causing anyone who controlls state "stuff" to be a criminal.

But the above is irrelevant. ICANN shouldn't decide who controlls top level domain names! thats the job for governements. Or maybe the united nations!

Actually, it is ICANN's jobs. The United States of America created something called "ARPAnet", the departement of defense created a computer netowork in order to survive a nuclear attack. And then it blossomed into the internet, a very american and commercial enterprise. And so the gov't, and some other people, made ICANN.

now, ICANN has some 'issues', but they most certainly do their job. And it is most certainly their job. South africa, if they really care, can make their own internet. They can call it "ZANet," which is somewhat catchy. That would be the governemet's job.

However, until the gov't demonstrates that they can successfully administer .za, they should not be allowed to try. Why break something if it works?

And finally, I get to what I am really ranting about. Geopolitical issues and the internet. I think that it is really stupid that any country should be able to control someone in another country because they can access their data. China and censorship. France and that nazi stuff they were trying to censor. Frankly, I think that if the stuff is hosted here, our laws apply. If someone starts a new country, lets call it "bastardlawsuitland," and then makes a law that slashdot is illegal, can they sue slashot because slashdot didn't make itself inaccessible to them in their country?

By the current laws, which admittedly are very very vague, the answer is yes. And that pisses me off to no end.

Oh, I have karma to burn, by the way. But I am pissed off and this is relevant.

I Think We May Be Missing the Point

[giverson]

The discussion above seems to be centered on who should have control of the .za TLD when that isn't really the issue.

I certainly don't have a problem with the South African government controlling the domain, but there is a procedure for them to get control. If they would go to ICANN and follow the procedure all would be happy.

Instead, they seem to be attempting to hijack the .za with no regard to the system that is already in place. Is that really appropriate? ICANN is in charge at this point whether we like it or not. Can we really support nations ignoring the system and doing their own thing?

The bottom line is that the South Africa government thinks that it is above the system. I suggest that they try the proper procedure for acquiring control of the domain. They should at the very least wait to get hostile until they have good reason to be (such as having their request for control rejected inappropriately).

Yeah, I'm probably wrong though.

.mv is owned by the gov...

[Maldivian]

And they only let their 'friends' get domains, everyone is has to pay by the nose. And also these domains are things that they like, and ofcourse they have all the right to cease and void any domain (not to mention arrest anyone) that violates their silly little rules. Dhiraagu is their crone, run by the facist/imperlistic Microsoftian C&W.

There, now you see what a gov owned TLD can do. I feel ZA would go the same was as MV. And no, I dont think a single person running it is a good idea either. Maybe it could go back to the universities (where ZA zones started) and be run by acadamics again instead of single man corporations spoon fed by ICANN?

*Who* was planning to hit Mike with a bus?

[billstewart]

Yes, Mike could go off the deep end, or get hit by a bus. But if he *does* get hit by a bus in the near future, we'll have a good idea who did it. :-)

Internet namespace, like many other activities, is an activity for civilized society to make intelligent decisions about. Governments sometimes get into power by being the most intelligent people in civil society, like Plato's hypothetical philosopher-kings, but they often get to power by being a bunch of violent corrupt thugs, or by being a more popular alternative group of people who led a popular revolution to overthrow a bunch of violent insane corrupt thugs, but that doesn't mean that either they have any skills for operating an internet or that they have any moral authority for doing so. And apparently they South African government has demonstrated that they don't have Clue 1 about how to run an Internet. It's simply not their skill set, and there's no reason for it to be their job.

Unlike non-country-code domains, where there's no obvious reason why there should be One Root To Rule Them All or why the US government should get to appoint the people to run it, country-code domains do have some obvious connection to the countries they're named after - but does that mean they should be run by the Post Office, or the One Phone Company, or by some internet standards committee (my preference), or by the Chamber of Commerce, or by the [Insert-Country-Name] National Geographic Society, or simply by the First-Come-First-Served rule? It's a hierarchical name space, and that inherently means somebody's in charge. Failing to define that up front, as the internet failed to do, leads to all this Root Wars nonsense, and it's not inherently fixable.

It belongs to SA

[shandu]

I am always amazed at naivity of fellow geeks when it comes to politics. This whole saga about the .za is about global political manouvering.
Not so long ago there was an post on here about the US government moving to control ICANN. My understanding of the situation is the SA gorvenment is preempting what they see as an attempt by the US to control the Internet. Their primary objective is to have the .za domain control within SA. Obvoiusly, being politicians they will try to laverage power where ever they can. This is a point that Mike Lawrie missed. South Africa has regulatory and NGO bodies that have the power/resources to chalange unreasonable ministers and the bills they propose. Mr Lawrie did not use any of these bodies, he instead went off to the opposition party and asked them to fight off the gov. Now I read he's taken the .za offshore. Meanwhile, institutions that can bring sanity to this situation are left bemused by this action.

I know Mr Lawrie is following this on slashdot. I wish to say to him why hasn't he used the aparatuses provided by ICASA and there is sangonet, I know they do understand and sympathise with your cause (they are part of a powerful lobby within the ruling party).

To everyone who finds the SA gov actions deplorable; This is not the last such case we will see. Most governments are already questioning the legitimacy of ICANN to control a soveiregn country's domain space.
Next up Fance, who knows?

What does a past HIV/AIDS discussion have anything to do with this issue?

Re:It belongs to SA

[vrassoc]

A better question that yours:

Why hasnt the SA govt participated in the namespace meetings seeing as they had been invited to do so from day one?

look as long as i get to keep my .za mail address!

[Anonymous Coward]

i dont care who takes control, i like my dan@.za mail addy.

No you listen up

[Sycraft-fu]

And lay off the name calling. It may score you mod points but it really is juvinile.

I never claimed that ICANN couldn't or wouldn't accept the South African government's control of the .za file. My poit is that wether they do or no is entirely up to them. The government can't "seize control" if ICANN tells them they can't. Now I haven't seen a statement form ICANN one way or another, so I don't know what they intend.

I am attempting to respond to those that think that the South African government can somehow just take control of the domain against ICANN's wishes (and many who seem to think that is a great thing). No, they can't. If they take over the domain and ICANN choses NOT to accept their authority, their only recourse would be:

1) To attempt to use physical force to make ICANN and the roots obey their wishes. Since most of the roots and ICANN itself are located in the US, this is not possable.

2) To attempt to use legal force to make ICANN obey their wishes. This could potentially work, the courts would hear the case at least.

3) To ignore ICANN and operate their own root level service.

Now again, this is all assuming that ICANN does indeed decide to deny the government's authority. If they say ok to the change over, that's the end of it.

However, the point of my post is to attempt to explain the nature of the whole DNS heirechary to the people that are under the mistaken impression that a government can simply "seize control" of a domain. They can't, ICANN can simply instruct the roots not to listen to them. As with all DNS information, it's based on trust. The roots trust ICANN, most DNS servers in the world trust the roots, the roots trust those that are approved to administer changes to a given domain. Thus, for most people, what ICANN says, goes.

About the only way this will get changed is if the US courts decide ICANN is doing something wrong and force a legal rememdy on them, or a large alternate root network comes to life and gets widely accepted.

Now I'm not trying to endorse ICANN or disparage them, i'm just telling you how it is. For now, they make the rules regarding DNS. They can, at their discression, decide wether to accept the South African government as the new administrator of the .za domain and there is little the government can do about it other than challenge it in US court.

Again, this is all dependant on what ICANN decides. They may well decide to allow the government to administer the .za domain and then that is that. However there seems to be a misconception that the government can somehow usurp authority without ICANN's permission and that is simply not true.

Next time, read a little more carefully and try not to resort to namecalling. It makes you sound like a little kid.