Re: South African Law on Crypto Providers
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"
<joemoore@iegrec.org> said:
> Sounds like South Africa is about to kick itself off the Internet.
and Matt Black <matt@mattblack.cjb.net> 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
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