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Africa Gets Its Own Web Address (bbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the their-moment dept.

Africa now has the unique web address .africa, equivalent to the more familiar .com, following its official launch by the African Union. From a report on BBC: AU commission chairperson Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma hailed its creation as the moment when Africa "got [its] own digital identity." The AU says the .africa domain name will "bring the continent together as an internet community." Addresses can now reflect a company's interest in the whole of Africa. For example, a mobile phone company could create mobile.africa to show its Africa-wide presence, or a travel company could set up travel.africa.

89 comments

  1. Too long, didn't type by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 1

    > (blah).africa

    Too long, didn't type. Why didn't they just steal ".af" (Afghanistan today, but common abbreviation for Africa)?

    1. Re:Too long, didn't type by rvw14 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Time to register imisstherainsdownin.africa

    2. Re:Too long, didn't type by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      Too long, didn't type. Why didn't they just steal ".af" (Afghanistan today, but common abbreviation for Africa)?

      Cause then every domain would be "as fuck", which could possibly cause confusion.

    3. Re:Too long, didn't type by Tempest_2084 · · Score: 4, Informative

      That would be I *bless* the rains down in Africa.

    4. Re:Too long, didn't type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think we're in Kansas any more.

    5. Re:Too long, didn't type by s.petry · · Score: 2

      Carry on my wayward son...

      --

      -The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.

    6. Re:Too long, didn't type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      LOL! You're killing me. Funniest thing I've seen all day. Honestly. Let me return the favor:

      Buckwheat has converted to Islam . . .
      He's now Kareem of Wheat.

      What does a n1gger have in common with a soda machine?
      They both don't work and always take your money.

      Why are there only two pallbearers at a n1ggers funeral?
      There are only two handles on a garbage can.

      What's the difference between bigfoot and a hard working n1gger?
      Bigfoot has been spotted.

      Why do n1ggers only chill and kick it?
      Because they don't like to hang.

      What do you call thirty five blacks in a room?
      Bunch of N1ggers.

      In Alabama, what do you call a black honors graduate of Harvard Law School?
      N1gger.

    7. Re:Too long, didn't type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or .niger (lol because it's a real country)

    8. Re:Too long, didn't type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would be I *bless* the rains down in Africa.

      That's "Slow-motion walter. And fire engine guy"

    9. Re:Too long, didn't type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I painted my laptop black to make it run faster.
      And now its not working.

      Can anyone translate what this ape is saying ?

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksEPdDcZwhQ

    10. Re:Too long, didn't type by jfdavis668 · · Score: 1

      I don't think we're in Kansas anymore, Toto.

    11. Re:Too long, didn't type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Q: What does the post office have in common with Payless Shoes?

      A: 10,000 pairs of black loafers.

    12. Re:Too long, didn't type by Gussington · · Score: 1

      That would be I *bless* the rains down in Africa.

      Lol, this is my Dad's favourite song, and for the last 30 years we've been singing 'missed' until Iast year when I was learning to play the song and found the real lyrics. I actually think missed sounds better, as the song has a bit of a sombre tone, about longing and missed opportunities, and missing something huge like the rains in a dry continent sort of resonates with that. Blessed just have the same ring to it.

    13. Re:Too long, didn't type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      Chrome says:

      This site can’t be reached

      This site on the company, organisation or school intranet has the same URL as an external website.

      Try contacting your system administrator.
      ERR_ICANN_NAME_COLLISION

    14. Re:Too long, didn't type by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      I was going to suggest .niqqers. But then there's a problem of distinguishing the subtypes, so it'd have to be a two parter like .co.uk.... so .sand.niqqers and .harambe.niqqers

    15. Re:Too long, didn't type by MoogMan · · Score: 1

      lynx.africa

  2. Great! by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

    An easy way to filter out those Nigerian Prince scam emails!

    --
    #DeleteFacebook
    1. Re: Great! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Considering the number of phishing emails that my users receive, Nigerian scams are an amusing diversion.

  3. racists by the_Bionic_lemming · · Score: 1

    Ouch, just wait till the racists find out. There's going to be some very bad websites out there...

    --
    _ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
    1. Re: racists by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      More likely is Stormfront demanding .aryan

  4. Why a continent? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Sure, .au exists, but that's a country.
    This is weird. The African Union is a far different entity from the European Union, for example.
    There's nothing comparable for North or South America, nor should there be.

    1. Re:Why a continent? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      Even if the AU were way more EU-like, having a TLD for a continent; rather than for entities in the AU zone or something, still wouldn't make a whole lot of sense.

      If having their precious vanity domain amuses some people, it certainly won't be the dumbest idea ICANN has dabbled in; but it's hard to make a good case for a TLD that is geographic, rather than vaguely tied to a concept, like .com and friends; but covers an area that is unified more or less only in the sense that it's classified as a single continent. For the purposes of travel, trade, customs, currency, etc. there isn't really such a thing as 'Africa', there are 54 nation states(not all of them exactly happy with each other at any given time); plus a dozen or so oddball dependencies and quasi-states that have some trappings of statehood but not enough clout to get full recognition. Unless you expect your customers to suck at geography and need to remind them what continent you are on for some reason, 'is in or associated with Africa' really doesn't clarify much.

    2. Re:Why a continent? by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      There are also .eu and .asia. Additionally, the number of TLDs has become quite big and their justification unclear. How could you restrict the access to a list including .eurovision or .firestone?

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    3. Re:Why a continent? by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      I certainly would have no reason to argue that .africa isn't at least as worthy as a great many other gTLDs; and since we've already started down that dumb idea, there's no principled reason to deny the request to create it; it's just that gTLDs are mostly worthless trash with no particularly good reason to exist, so not being worse than they are isn't much of an achievement; and I would also have a difficult time arguing in favor of the utility and value of the TLD.

    4. Re:Why a continent? by CustomSolvers2 · · Score: 1

      The list in my previous comment was also meant to somehow support your point: lots of alternatives which almost nobody uses. And what happens with the country second-level domains is even worse (a descriptive but incomplete list). I am currently running some crawling bots to rank domains and have found quite a few problems on this front; in fact, they still cannot understand all the possible scenarios (after having collected over 1M domains).

      --
      Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
    5. Re:Why a continent? by OrangeTide · · Score: 2

      It's not the worst new top-level domain. Not even close to the worst. .science .stream .men .party .top .study .click .gdn .date .webcam .tips .expert .watch .wiki .fail .cool .wtf .xyz .gripe

      --
      “Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
  5. Same as .com by barbariccow · · Score: 4, Informative

    Equivalent to .com? What, we can't say TLD here? Slashdot: catering to the LCD :(

    1. Re:Same as .com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Equivalent to .com? What, we can't say TLD here? Slashdot: catering to the LCD :(

      This is Africa! We're still catering to the CRT, thank you very much.

    2. Re:Same as .com by DontBeAMoran · · Score: 1

      Liquid Crystal Displays

      --
      #DeleteFacebook
    3. Re:Same as .com by ilsaloving · · Score: 1

      Lactose Constrained Diets?

    4. Re:Same as .com by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      LCF. Lowest common factor. CS wise much more efficient.

  6. "web address" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Good thing you simplified the concept of a TLD to help the Slashdot audience of brain damaged 6 year olds understand that it's "equivalent to the more familiar .com".

    1. Re: "web address" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Quite a few non-technical users on Slashdot. Knowing what a URL is is not a requirement for shitposting here.

  7. Afganistan should have been .afg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And we would have had the quicker to type .af right now.

    1. Re:Afganistan should have been .afg by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Because some BS continental TLD (whoever heard of such a thing?) is more important than an actual country?

  8. I TOTOly get it but.... by cmiller173 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    So who is going to register Iblesstherainsdownin.africa ?

    1. Re:I TOTOly get it but.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Informative

      Unfair that this is modded redundant when it was posted 30 minutes before rvw14's comment. Note to moderators: order on page != order posted.

      Posting AC as I'm the first "Interesting +1" mode here.

  9. what nonsense by iggymanz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    trying to imply there is any kind of unity between the North African Arab countries and the others...yeah right

    1. Re:what nonsense by Baron_Yam · · Score: 2

      TLDs haven't been used properly anyway. It's a waste.

      But that's what you get when you have the legacy of an American-built, American-centric system, designed with imperfect foresight, and there's too much invested to wipe and reload.

    2. Re:what nonsense by iggymanz · · Score: 1

      we got a good flexible TLD system that people can use in traditional way or with recent additions.

        countries have TLD if they want to use them. the USA put those in a long time ago. And plenty of other product/concept specific ones added if anyone wants to be under them which was international effort

      70 percent of the global internet traffic is carried through the USA anyway, fine that they had historic heavy influence on it. The USA built something great and useful for the world.

    3. Re:what nonsense by Baron_Yam · · Score: 2

      The USA gave us a dual usage-based / geo-politically based domain system.

      It really ought to be have been solely geo-politically based with a byte or two's worth of flags to indicate content type, and domains restricted to appropriate use.

      [domain].[state/province].[nation].[super-national grouping]. With tiered DNS that assumes most of that for you if you leave it out. And you know what? Something to distinguish the domain from the other parts so you could have arbitrary numbers of sub-domain categorizations and not have to rely on how many parts are in the name to know what each part represents.

      Just because the Internet is great and useful for the world doesn't mean it's perfect or that we should blindly accept it as it is. Just because the USA built it and most of the traffic passes through their borders doesn't mean you can't find fault with aspects of it that stem from that truth.

    4. Re:what nonsense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So you are saying there is some unity between the Magreb and Arab countries? Sir you are an idiot there is a reason why Syrians refugees headed to Europe not Saudi Arabia, Egypt or Dubai.

    5. Re:what nonsense by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And why would geo-political based domains be better than usage? If I'm from the UK, then when they leave the EU, do they need to re-register, or do all the domains move? Do browsers/DNS assumptions change when Crimea is annexed by Russia, to point their web users at russian sites? If Canada stops being a commonwealth country, do I need to swap over all the Canadian Domains, as they've left a supra-national grouping? What about if the US makes Puerto Rico a state (A possible move, given the referendum scheduled for June over the question). What if a new state or country comes up through sub-division? Or if someone moves their business/residence elsewhere? Must they now change their TLD? Would anything catch the change over and redirect? What if Angsty-Blog.PL already exists, but the owner of Angsty-Blog.UK moves to Poland?

      Geo-political as a supplement to a usage based system is OK. As the sole determinator of TLD, it's a dumpster fire worse than the one we have now, and goes against the increasing globalization of the internet. Because using it assumes that either once a domain is assigned, it is removed from the global pool for all TLD's, making them effectively useless, or that once registered, it will never be updated, and won't need to be accurate going forward, making it next to useless. The only alternative is to allow infighting and collisions, which would promptly make an even bigger mess.

      And what happens if I'm traveling, and made use of the DNS assumptions at home when I made my bookmarks. Does my "Bank" bookmark suddenly lead to the website of a scammer? Assumptions should be made at the client side ONLY. Infrastructure such as DNS has no business having to decide what I meant, both because of the trust issues, and because of the fact that doing so would require overly much computational overhead.

      It's a dumb idea, and if you had given it a moment of thought, rather than saying "The system as it exists is a dumpster fire, and having two kinds of TLDs makes no sense, but just usage based ones would run out, so let's use the other option" you would have realized it. Yes, the current system is terrible. You have managed to come up with an idea that is at least one order of magnitude worse.

  10. another TLD to block in Postfix by Indy1 · · Score: 1

    Since the only thing (network wise) that comes out of Africa is spam and other crap, blocking this will be 100% perfect compression.

    --
    Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
  11. Still waiting for ".slashdot" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It's an anagram.

    C'mon put up the $125K applicaiton fee, nerds!

    1. Re:Still waiting for ".slashdot" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Age Tea Tea Pee Colon Slash Slash Slash Dot Dot Slash Dot Slash

    2. Re:Still waiting for ".slashdot" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      With all those slashes I thought you were talking about O.J. Simpsons website... Or was that a bunch of backslashes?

  12. Who exactly are "the racists" you refer to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Who exactly are "the racists" that you're referring to?

    Would you consider black Africans who host a website at a .africa domain that promotes anti-white, anti-Asian, anti-Indian, or anti-Amerindian sentiment, for example, as being among "the racists"?

    1. Re:Who exactly are "the racists" you refer to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Would you consider black Africans who host a website at a .africa domain that promotes anti-white, anti-Asian, anti-Indian, or anti-Amerindian sentiment, for example, as being among "the racists"?

      Yes, absolutely. But I find it far more likely that Trumpets will be setting up shop at domains like GoBackTo.africa.

    2. Re:Who exactly are "the racists" you refer to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You better not mention this to zionists.

    3. Re:Who exactly are "the racists" you refer to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Sorry, snowflake, but everything that happens to challenge your narrow world view isn't "fake."

    4. Re:Who exactly are "the racists" you refer to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Shut up, NlGGER !

    5. Re:Who exactly are "the racists" you refer to? by wyHunter · · Score: 1

      Of course.

  13. I spent 5 minutes trying pronounce that name by halivar · · Score: 1

    Having done so, I can now conclude my reading of TFS with a proud sense of accomplishment, though I never finished it.

  14. also in news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    nigeria just got assigned .scam domain

  15. Enough already with the TLDs by TroII · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I wish them luck, but I'm not sure it makes a lot of sense to be creating yet another top-level domain.

    For example, a mobile phone company could create mobile.africa to show its Africa-wide presence, or a travel company could set up travel.africa.

    So they'll sell off a few hundred generic words to speculators, but I predict few others will be buying in. Many of the new gTLDs created over the past couple of years are either shutting down, or jacking up domain prices into the multi-hundred dollar per year range just to stay in operation. Keeping a TLD alive isn't cheap, and it turns out there's not much demand for all of this namespace after all. When you can't amortize your TLD's infrastructure cost across millions of customers, you wind up having to price each domain so high that nobody's going to buy one.

    --
    "If there was a gay Afro-Puertorican Linux distribution, I'd give it a try" ~lucm
    1. Re:Enough already with the TLDs by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 1

      So the gTLDs are a total slum and surprisingly expensive? I'm even more impressed.

    2. Re:Enough already with the TLDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's like if you want to set up shop in an outlying part of a city that has recently contracted and no longer maintains the infrastructure that far out. It's going to be in really bad shape and it will cost a lot to get the basic services you need like roads, electricity, water, sewerage, etc.

    3. Re:Enough already with the TLDs by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      For example, a mobile phone company could create mobile.africa to show its Africa-wide presence, or a travel company could set up travel.africa.

      Why not use the other TLDs that already exist for these cases? africa.mobi and africa.travel? I'm sure this doesn't create any additional confusion at all...

      "Wait, was it africa.travel or travel.africa, again?"

      captcha: breakage

    4. Re:Enough already with the TLDs by thegarbz · · Score: 2

      It makes no more or less sense than the .eu TLD.

      It makes a shitload more sense than every other TLD that has come out in the past 3 years.

  16. parked domains by edeefelt · · Score: 1

    I assume travel.africa and mobile.africa became parked domains within an hour of this article coming out.

  17. Poor DNS configuration by Motherfucking+Shit · · Score: 3, Informative

    # host 0abaa55f4b4b5f8a9a55d1fe33f49a.africa
    0abaa55f4b4b5f8a9a55d1fe33f49a.africa has address 127.0.53.53
    0abaa55f4b4b5f8a9a55d1fe33f49a.africa mail is handled by 10 your-dns-needs-immediate-attention.africa.

    Great, they have some wildcard garbage going on instead of properly returning NXDOMAIN.

    --
    "BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
    1. Re:Poor DNS configuration by Zak3056 · · Score: 1

      At least their wildcard bullshit points at localhost, which is better than some ad server, or some malware hosting site (but I repeat myself). It would be worse.

      --
      What part of "shall not be infringed" is so hard to understand?
    2. Re:Poor DNS configuration by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No they are doing what they are supposed to

      Has to be like that for the first 120 days I think.

  18. Can we use .js for North America? by NicknameUnavailable · · Score: 1

    Please?

    1. Re:Can we use .js for North America? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That's reserved for Israel.

  19. 'subdomain.domain' stuff by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    All of this is because back when the internet was invented, Gore had a brain-fart and couldn't see the future for the fumes.
    And the intertubes has developed way too far for the tech community to scrap everything and actually do a good design, so, like LA,
    they are stuck with the cannot-be-understood web of freeways designed by simple minds at the whim of the contractors, city engineers and state bureaucrats.

  20. That's not a web address... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    It's a top level domain. Which is pedantic on some level but...sigh. Whatever, this stopped being news for nerds a while ago.

  21. a TLD to block by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Just another TLD to block, along with win, bid, name, etc etc etc that are used by Russian scammers
    and another term to add to spam filters.

    1. Re:a TLD to block by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 2

      Here are just a few of the ones I block (plus a few that aren't listed):

      .tattoo .sucks .shoes .porn .pink .ooo .love .fashion .diet .deals .chat .band .money .sexy .sex .wedding .adult .marketing .hiphop .loan .lol .party .cool .church .christmas .buzz .blackfriday .black .beer
      moncler .racing .date .wang .click .review .link .faith .ninja .rocks

      --
      Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  22. The Summary is Blatently Wrong by rahvin112 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Africa didn't get its own web address. Some company registered the Africa Top Level Domain (TLD). This company has total control over the TLD and likely has no relationship to the continent or any of the countries in it. In all likelyhood the registrant for the TLD is a European or American company hoping to make big bucks charging people to use the TLD. In 10 years 99.999999999% of the domains on this TLD will not even involve an African company or individual.

    1. Re:The Summary is Blatently Wrong by nyet · · Score: 2

      I don't know where /. gets their editors, but they're definitely getting dumber and dumber as the years go by.

    2. Re:The Summary is Blatently Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Africa didn't get its own web address. Some company registered the Africa Top Level Domain (TLD). This company has total control over the TLD and likely has no relationship to the continent or any of the countries in it. In all likelyhood the registrant for the TLD is a European or American company hoping to make big bucks charging people to use the TLD.

      Did you RTFA? No, you didn't.

      Icann, the body that establishes these addresses known as generic Top-Level Domains, approved the move, after lobbying by the AU. [= African Union]
      The campaign was spearheaded by a South African company ZA Central Registry (ZACR), which will now be responsible for registering .africa names.

    3. Re:The Summary is Blatently Wrong by Gussington · · Score: 1

      . In 10 years 99.999999999% of the domains on this TLD will not even involve an African company or individual.

      In 10 years there'll probably be as many .africa domains as there are now.
      I was working in China when the .asia TLD was released and the discussion was had about whether we register a bunch of names to secure them. We decided it was a gimmick and didn't bother, and it turns out everyone else must've thought the same thing. You see the odd .asia domain from time to time, but for the size of the continent, and the amount of business they do, they are almost non-existent.

    4. Re:The Summary is Blatently Wrong by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In 10 years 99.999999999% of the domains on this TLD will not even involve an African company or individual.

      In ten years there will be 100 billion .africa domains?

      Sounds extremely lucrative for the registrars.

  23. Too much trouble by JustAnotherOldGuy · · Score: 1

    I guess it was too much trouble to list the fucking domain in the summary, eh?

    --
    Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
  24. ok by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    you can use anything as long as its regustered but whats wrong with af which is it abbreviation for the whole of africa. what i want for my domain is pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis ;)

  25. Obama can finally have a website by reboot246 · · Score: 1

    He can call it www.iwasbornin.africa!

    I know, I know, but it is funny.

  26. "web address"? by nyet · · Score: 1

    You guys hire complete morons now, huh?

    Also, grats on the clickbait tactic of not telling us what the TLD actually is in the headline.

    You suck.

  27. You are blatantly wrong by WML+MUNSON · · Score: 3, Informative

    Africa didn't get its own web address. Some company registered the Africa Top Level Domain (TLD). This company has total control over the TLD and likely has no relationship to the continent or any of the countries in it. In all likelyhood the registrant for the TLD is a European or American company hoping to make big bucks charging people to use the TLD. In 10 years 99.999999999% of the domains on this TLD will not even involve an African company or individual.

    You don't have a clue. A cursory Google search would tell you that it's operated by a South African company (ZACR), which was awarded control by ICANN following a lengthy legal dispute with a Kenyan competitor (DCA).

  28. Relative ??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is the head of the AU mentioned in this summary a relative of south Africa's president Jacob Zuma ?

    1. Re:Relative ??? by beuges · · Score: 1

      She is his ex-wife.

  29. Separation by dddux · · Score: 1

    Yeah, let's separate everybody just like the great old world. This is going to make it easier to make virtual borders. Wonderful. That's all we need. /s

    --
    "It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
  30. I think someone made a mistake by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    While reading the title, i was thinking that the domain should be .af (as much as I hate shortening already short words).
    Probably get more buy-in.
    imcool.af