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The local chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-ZA) last night celebrated more than 10 years of leased-line Internet connectivity in SA by honouring Mike Lawrie, one of the founding fathers of local connectivity.Lawrie was responsible for the evolution of what became the local Internet in his capacity as a data centre staff of one at Rhodes University in the Eastern Cape.
At an informal gathering where he was presented with a merit award for outstanding services to the development of the Internet, he regaled the audience with anecdotes from the pre-history of networking. But the continuing restrictions on voice-over-Internet Protocol (VOIP) and domain issues hung over the proceedings.
“It pains me quite a bit that we are stifled by legislation,” he says, predicting the situation will get worse before it gets better. In the mid1990s, he says, SA ranked 16th in the world in terms of its technological development. “We certainly don't rank 16th anymore.”
He is concerned by the unused bandwidth available to parastatal companies Transtel and Eskom, and that held by municipalities. He laments the restrictions that keep cutting-edge protocols and technologies from use locally. But it is the Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Bill that worries him most.
The Bill, already overdue to be tabled in Parliament, gives legal recognition to electronic signatures and cyber crimes. It also makes provision for the government to take virtually complete control of the .ZA domain name space, an area Lawrie can rightly claim expertise in.
Lawrie initiated the process to activate the .ZA domain and administered most of it from inception. That is, until it grew too big to handle alone in 1995 and he “threw his toys out of the cot big time” in the words of William Stucke, a former chairman of ISOC-ZA.
In August 1995, Stucke says, Lawrie sent an e-mail to fellow administrators. He proclaimed that henceforth anyone who wished to register a domain name in the .co.za space would pay a R10 000 once-off fee, and R5 000 per year to maintain it. That would entitle them to five randomly selected letters, something like jfyrh.co.za. Should they actually want to choose their own name, the price would be doubled. Unless somebody wanted to take over administration of .co.za from him, of course.
Non-profit body Uniforum was soon created, and today offers domain names (chosen by the registrant) for a R150 registration and R50 annual fee.
The upper level .ZA is still technically administered by Lawrie, although the Namespace organisation has been formed to take the task over from him. Lawrie serves on the Namespace board.
Under the domain name provisions of the ECT Bill, the government would take control of the .ZA space through a body to which it would nominate individuals, and which would carry out its policy. Lawrie is not impressed.
“The government proposals are driven by a frightful amount of ignorance,” he says, referring to the Bill and an earlier proposal for a body that would take over his job. He does it for free; the proposal called for R24 million to do the same thing.
ISOC-ZA recommends that government takes only an observer's role in Namespace, and leaves the running of the domain system to that body. It is planning a series of workshops on the Bill to educate the public and draft a response to the legislation. Details are to be announced at a later stage.
Related stories:
Internet in SA turns 10-ish
Namespace moves towards controlling ZA names
Namespace: Should we care? (Column)
