Dear Debian-legal: Please pardon my tardiness in replying to this subject (I just read my DWN), but since I've seen no mention of this particular aspect of it, here goes:
In a couple of e-mails in the thread[1], "Joe Moore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> said: > Sounds like South Africa is about to kick itself off the Internet. and Matt Black <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> observed: > I've been trying to look up the official South African govt site at: > http://www.parliament.gov.za/pls/portal30/url/page/parliamentary_bills > and > http://www.parliament.gov.za/pls/portal30/url/page/parliamentary_acts > - but keep getting a "Service Temporarily Unavailable" message. A funny/sad/scary situation is in place due to the law[-to-be?] which gave rise to this thread. The law places the .ZA ccTLD in the hands of the Ministry of Communications. Many people (notably Mike Lawrie, .ZA's administrator) oppose this as a power grab and a recipe for, indeed, ``kick[ing] itself off the Internet.'' One reason for the latter is the above-mentioned unavailability of the Parliament's server(s?)---if the government can't run its own domain... Should you wish to know more, a good starting point is duelling press releases[2] on Politech. An RFCI-Discuss email[3] has an overview, and you can check an ICANNWatch page[4], or the home[5] of Namespace.ZA, an electronic-roots organization trying to provide a solution. If this has followups, please cc: me. Thanks. -- Best wishes, Max Hyre [1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200210/msg00017.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-legal/2002/debian-legal-200210/msg00015.html [2] http://www.politechbot.com/p-03548.html [3] http://lists.megacity.org/pipermail/rfci-discuss/2002-June/000677.html [4] http://www.icannwatch.org/article.php?sid=791 [5] http://www.namespace.org.za -- Best wishes, Max Hyre
