RE: [FreeDNS] fw: Govt, Namespace find compromise on .za

[Anna Swanepoel <annas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The way I see it (and these are definitely my own views only)is that the
whole bill is about the government wishing to 1) control and 2)milk the
internet industry for all it's worth financially...

Costs:

~ Can you imagine the costs to internet users to secure their domain
names?(the draft bill specifically stipulates that pricing policy is up to
the Minister)
~ Can you imagine the costs to administer this? (and believe me, we will be
footing the bill)
~ They did not wish to take part in Mike Lawrie's Namespace thing, but
prefer to start from scratch (who cares about the costs, internet users are
rich...)
~ To quote Mike Lawrie: "What I was doing on a voluntary
and unpaid basis was now proposed to be done by a staff of 14 full-time and
3 part-time persons, with a budget of R24,525,000 over three years. This
included an annual salary bill of R4.2million at 1999 rates. [See document
published by the DoC Office of Director-General titled "Establishment of
Domain Name Authority, Updated Final Version, October 1999"]"
~ very cryptography product has to be licenced by the governement, another
great money spinner (nevermind the practicality of this "Cryptography
experts have pointed out that many pieces of popular software, such as the
Windows operating systems and most Linux distributions, are packaged with or
contain embedded cryptography software." - from IT Web) 

etc...

 
Control: 

~ "Another provision that has drawn fire is a requirement that any
cryptography product used in SA be registered with the Department of
Communications, so that the vendor can assist law enforcement officials in
cracking encryption when needed." from IT Web (I think that just says it
all)
~ The minister will still be selecting the panel, who in turn will be
selecting the members of the board...and I don't agree that it "coulda been
worse" ...it boils down to excatly the same thing as the initial draft - the
Minister will have the final say..
~ has anybody read section44 and 45 of chapterVII of the draft bill? They
basically tell suppliers how and when to deliver services/goods and order
them to supply refunds within 30 days (without any penalty apart from the
direct cost of returning the goods) if a consumer cancells the order (no
reason necessary), etc. While I agree that consumers need to be protected,
chapter VII dictates billing policies, etc and some of them will result in
huge financial losses to suppliers....

etc


Anna Swanepoel


-----Original Message-----
From: Matthew Ogden [mailto:matthew@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 9:47 AM
To: freedns@xxxxxx
Subject: Re: [FreeDNS] fw: Govt, Namespace find compromise on .za


I suppose so, but hell, whats this about other language second level
domains?
The entire world uses their domains in english, unless it is another world
dominating language, adding another 10 second level domains for every
current
domain would cause serious confusion and only require that organizations
spend more to secure their namespace. 


_____________________________________________________
FreeDNS                    ZA NiC - free domain names
freedns@xxxxxx    Archive: http://www.za.net/freedns/