Re: [ga] South African .za ccTLD administrator takes drastic action to prevent government takeover

["Jon Lawrence" <jon@jonlawrence.com>]

Frankly as an Australian, and someone who has been involved in administration
of the .au ccTLD I welcomed the intervention of the Australian government
in assisting auDA to take control of the .au space from its previous delegate.

Robert Elz (the previous delegate) did an excellent unpaid job in maintaining
the .au space for many years however he was neither elected to that position
nor was he responsive to the needs of the internet community in Australia
in recent years.

We now have a domain space in Australia that is managed by a body that is
accountable to the internet community.  Whether they manage the space well
or not remains to be seen but at least there has now been a number of major
steps forward - namely the easing of the over-restrictive allocation policies
in place and the creation of a potentially world-class registry operation.

I don't see anything there that makes this a bad move at all.  Australia
has a vigorous democratic process and is capable of managing its domain
space in any way it sees fit.

regards

Jon Lawrence



>-- Original Message --
>Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 08:00:27 -0700
>From: William X Walsh <william@wxsoft.info>
>Reply-To: ga@dnso.org
>To: Jim Ayson <jim@philmusic.com>
>CC: ga@dnso.org
>Subject: Re: [ga] South African .za ccTLD administrator takes drastic 
action
>to prevent government takeover
>
>
>Friday, June 14, 2002, 7:43:37 AM, Jim Ayson wrote:
>
>> At 10:45 PM 6/13/2002 -0700, William X Walsh wrote:
>>>Lawrie, a South African Internet pioneer who is not paid for
>>>administrating the ZA domain, told Reuters he had taken pre-emptive
>>>action to stop the government from seizing control.
>>>
>>>"The storage of the primary zone file that defines and controls the ZA
>>>namespace is now offshore," he said.
>
>> This is a problem when one individual controls a ccTLD. What if Lawrie
>gets 
>> hit by a truck tommorow? Will .ZA just go into limbo?
>
>Not at all.  Just like the Internet didn't collapse when Jon Postel
>died.
>
>There is no problem with one person being the delegate for a Top Level
>Domain.
>
>The problem is that the government thinks it has the sole ability to
>determine who runs that TLD, or that it has some rights to make that
>decision unilaterally.  It doesn't.
>
>The management of that TLD is a matter of the delegation between IANA
>and the delegate.  The government has no role in that.
>
>Unfortunately, however, in exchange for support for ICANN, ICANN sold
>out to powerful governmental interests such as the European
>governments and Australian government who demanded that they have a
>say in the management of ccTLDs.  This was a bad move in my opinion, a
>very bad one.  It was a step backwards for the effort to maintain and
>further private management of the DNS.  But in exchange for
>recognition, ICANN sold out and created the GAC and then adopted a
>change to RFC1591 that gave governments a stronger role in the ccTLD
>arena.
>
>However, that doesn't give any government the right to decide on its
>own that it is assuming management of a ccTLD.  It merely makes the
>government a party to any discussions about redelegation issues.
>
>South Africa is making a move based out of complete ignorance over how
>the DNS works, and what is involved, simply because a few ignorant
>legislators realized that they could create a new bureaucracy and
>possible revenue source for the government.
>
>The delegate should be applauded for taking the necessary steps to
>prevent the nationalization of the ccTLD zone file without a proper
>and informed process in place.
>
>-- 
>Best regards,
>William X Walsh <william@wxsoft.info>
>--
>Save Internet Radio!  
>CARP will kill Webcasting!
>http://www.saveinternetradio.org/
>
>
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