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

dangerous

[fferreres]

A lot (if not all) internet businesses will depend on DNS working fine. And just 1 guy can bring it down? Why? How?

I wouldn't like to live in SA right now. He myght be a hero now, but he may become a non-hero whenever he likes. Also, he may die with some passwords unknown (recall the s. hacker contest for the library), or ran out of resources, etc.

It should be run by an independant goverment agency with stable staff and that directly depends on ICANN. Something like an independant Central Bank, but for hosts/domains.

Re:dangerous

[Simon Garlick]

Let me get this straight. You want control placed in the hands of

1. A government agency
2. That is independent
3. And has stable staff
4. And that depends directly on ICANN

Anything else? Must have unlimited funding? Must be able to fly? Must have jars full of M&Ms in the office but no brown ones?

Why Map To Countries Anyway?

[reallocate]

Why map to country names in the first place? The packets will find their way.

Re:If not the government?

[skaffen42]

I think Mike Lawrie understands the role of a domain administrator very well. As he explains it: "The domain administrator operates with the trust of the community. He doesn't own the domain."

The problem is that the Sotuth African internet community (justifiably) does not trust the SA government to act responsibly and competently in this role.

For local coverage of the situation see http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.jsp?o=4704

Military created the net

[aepervius]

And they tend to be as ungeeky as you can be. The academia used it. Some may be geeky but I can guarantee you that the Profs & researcher I know are far from being geeky or the "mad forgettful" scientific you see on TV or Cinema.

Geek took it then over later, when both where looking eslewhere. Academia was then unhappy at seeing how geek transformed it in an available-for-all net. Militar may have been unhappy seeing it used by civilian, but were extremly happy to see the physical connection multiply, thus enhancing the original net.

Then come marketing type which take over everything, put their dirty hand in every corner adding ads, tooking the net from the hand of geek and then putting it back in the hand of firms for the exploitation of the resource and in the hand of Mr Joe Average for the Feeding of finished product.

And thus Everybody had at one time the net in their hand. And lost it, to ultimatly be handled not as a Strategic resource, not as a Research help, not as a Wild Wide Internet wioth the joy and thrill of discovery, but as a normal, run of the mill, media interractive product.

PS : I don't pretend that is 100% truth, only a way to present it ;).

Re:Current nslookup info for .za

[ziegast]

% dig za soa
za. IN SOA rain.psg.com. hostmaster.psg.com.

Go Randy!

BTW: In cases where a national government and an interested party are at odds over the control of a TLD, the government usually wins in the end. There's a saying, though, about ownership that goes, "Posession is 9/10 of the law." That's what keeps ".za" running right now. At some point, the SA government can/will exert its influence to either 1) get ICANN to change the TLD NS records or 2) outlaw the use of unofficial ".za" servers for any SA ISP. Perhaps the best scenario will have Mike and the SA government reach a transition compromise. If not, it'll be interesting to watch in a Death-Star-finds-rebel-base kind of way.

-ez

(Former TLD zone admin for several countries)

Re:If not the government?

[Twylite]

You're absolutely right. Lawrie doesn't want to give it to the government because of the laws they want to put on the .za domain. Unfortunately there are 60%+ of the population who democratically elected the government to represent their interests, and Lawrie doesn't actually have a fucking say in WHAT laws government intend to make.

The SA government has to abide by ICANN rules, yes. ICANN rules require that the ccTLD administrator has the blessing of the national government, which Lawrie does not, and never did have. Apart from that, they do not require that SA not apply its national laws to domain ownership, dispute resolution, policy formation, etc, etc.

Re:Parallels with Elz and auDA?

[Mithrandir]

In this case the internet community was getting very pissed off with Robert Elz, the guy running it. He was slow, made very arbitrary decisions and there were huge backlogs. The internet user community had been complaining about him for a good 4-5 years before auDA finally took over - and they dramatically increased the quality of the service. This is very different to the south african situation.

Who can you trust?

[oldstrat]

So the question is really begging, but nobody really wants to answer it.

Who can we trust to administer the domain system?

A government, a group of governments, a group of individuals, or a corperation?
My gut response is none, all, some,and sometimes in no particular order
The internet was created on a trusted network achitecture.
That was great in the day when it was military and academic, but as the original architects feared, the net is not scaling well to a commercial and corperate environment.
Solutions?
Several I can see;

1.- Put it back in the hands of academia.
2.- Create a distributed user based system that is 'meta-moderated' something like the slash message system.
3.- Allow, or force a splinter into a sometimes compatible, sometimes not group of trans-internets that would sortof sometimes talk to each other in a fashion related to the way usenet works, and sometimes doesn't.

There's going to have to be medicine taken to fix these problems that have grown and grown, I'm just hopeful that whatever the medicine is, it doesn't kill the patient.

Re:If not the government?

[fyonn]

ahh fuck. sorry, this post was half written when I accidentally hit the "back a page" gesture in opera... now I've got to re-write it... bugger

right, lets try and reember what crap I was spewing last time:)

Should an Aussie have "got there first" and "registered" .uk, how do you think the UK government would react?

good point, bad specific example :) the UK gov would be using their *actual* iso country code of .gb instead, yup, thats right, the UK is, afaik, the only country in the world whose cctld is not their ISO 2 letter country code. .gb even exists (as a frozen cctld), go forth and zone transfer folks, check out the one domain within it and the 2 dozen machines at malvern.

anyways, lets ignore that technicality, I know the point you are trying to make. if some aussie had managed to register and get to control .uk then I can see how british businesses/gov might be annoyed. but that is an issue they can take up with icann. perhaps they shouldn't have given control away to some random aussie but you can't demand that the aussie give back control, why should he? esp if he's doing a good job. he can have control taken from him by icann but thats between the two of them.

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.

yes, back when the .za control was handed to lawrie, the gov wasn't interested. does that mean that they should have held back until a gov *was* interested? za needed a cctld and it needed one to be adminned locally so they skirted some of the rules to allow it to happen. understandable and they don't seem to have made a bad decision.

now the gov has decided that it wants to play too, fair enough, if they, icann and lawrie can come to a nice amicable result then all's well and good. but thats not what they want to do. they have decided that they *will* have control. well, thats not how it works. and nor should it be. they came in late in the game and they should abide by the rules that exist. the rules state the for control to transfer then all three parties (icann, the old admin and the new admin) must all agree. they don't.

dns entries aren't like food, water, gold, electricity etc. they are not a national resource. they are entries in a database. they are convenient and they are pretty empheral.

it's like companies sueing MAPS to get their mailserver ip's off the rbl lists. I'm sorry but imho, tough. it's paul vixie's database (it is him isn't it) that he allows other people to access. he can do with it as he damn well pleases and who are you or I to say what goes in?

dns is the same (err, very as they use the same protocol). sure icann have their own rules and regs about it and want it to be ubiqitous, and it pretty much is, but I fail to see why the za gov should be able to take control of their bit by force. if the current admin doesn't think that they will do a good job of it, perhaps he has a point?

imho, if the za gov wanted in on making decisions for the za domain then they should have been there at the start, the fact that it is now a different gov is irrelevant. if they want in then they can go about things properly.

and you're supporting the decision of one man to deny the instructions of a democratically elected government?

you say that like I should be considered a pariah for thinking so. yes, I do think that any man has the right to deny the instructions of a democratically elected government. it is perhaps an extreme example but nazi soldiers were instructed to kill jews by their democratically elected government. it wasn't a very good excuse when the war trials started as they were told that they should have disobeyed.

(*sigh* okay, hitlers party was, iirc elected democratically, then there were some political shenanigans, but afaik he had the support of the majority of the german ppl when the war started)(yeah, I've ont read the history in depth, I think my point is still valid thought)(and yes, I kow I'm skating very close to godwins law, but note that I'm not comparing anyone *to* a nazi or indeed, to hitler, just drawing an analogy that just because one is told to do something by "the law" doesn't mean it's right and it doesn't mean that he should obey)(and yes twy, if you want to invoke godwins law then just say so and I'll shut up :)

so yes, I can honestly say that I can easily picture many situations where one man can, and should stand up to instructions given to him by a democratically elected government. perhaps he is right to do so, perhaps he is wrong, but I respect his right to make his own decisions and he will be accountable for them.

WIPO recognises domain names as property.

and this is considered a good thing? the idea in general has it's merits (and demerits) but their implementation sucks. in fact this is possibly similar to the discussoin we're having. the idea of the za gov controlling the za domain has it's merits but what will the implemenation be like? I would consider mike lawrie to be reasonably well qualified to make that judgement.

Lawrie doesn't have the right to administer the .za namespace against the government's will.

I would say that the za gov has no implicit *right* to administer the .za namespace against icann's will.

dave