Johannesburg — Administrator wants to relinquish control, as long as it is not to the state

MIKE Lawrie, SA's domain name administrator, has been trying to get rid of his function for the past four years.

Lawrie regards it as a millstone that he inherited after leading a team of academics who introduced the internet to SA in the early 1990s.

He is not paid for the job and charges no registration fee for constituencies wishing to register on the system. As such, he has no real cash flow and with the current and predicted growth of the internet in SA, the task is becoming increasingly onerous.

But Lawrie is adamant that he will not hand over the administration of domain names in this country to a company controlled by government.

Lawrie and Namespace, the private sector company set up last year by internet users to govern domain names, have been vehemently opposed to the Electronic Communications and Transactions Bill, currently under the spotlight.

The bill, substantially amended in a late night sitting this week by the parliamentary communications committee, calls for a section 21 company to be established to govern domain names.

Namespace sees this as wasteful, arguing that the internet community should retain control of domain names, in consultation with government.

The issue has now become explosive, with the Democratic Alliance (DA) accusing government of wanting to run the domain name administration on its own by simply nationalising the function and the existing administrative bodies.

Not so, says communications department director-general Andile Ngcaba. Government wants to ensure all SA constituencies are represented on the body that controls domain names.

Why is this such an important issue? The domain names in question refer to a certain species of internet addresses. Lawrie is the registered administrator of the ZA domain with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers the global internet registration body.

He approves and co-ordinates the second level domain names such as co.za or ac.za of which there are currently about 17. These include overarching addresses for government, the military, companies, organisations, academic institutions and municipal councils.

Each of the second level domain names is then co- ordinated independently and represents many addresses. There are estimated to be more than 110000 companies registered under the co.za name, for example, adding up to millions of users. The ac.za name represents about 500000 students.

Lawrie has not threatened to shut down the internet, but has pointed out to the parties that he will oppose the redelegation of the ZA domain from him to government if government's interference in the internet is provided for in law.

Under such conditions, he argues Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers will not approve a request from government to take over the ZA domain. So Lawrie will de facto remain the administrator and as the bill does not allow for this, there will be a vacuum, he says.

The bottom line is that, should such a scenario play out, the domain will collapse as it did in Zimbabwe recently, and millions of normal internet and e-mail connections will no longer work.

If it comes to this, DA communications spokeswoman Dene Smuts says not only e-commerce but also e-government will be dead in the water. "The army will have to revert to cleft sticks."

The communications department has taken exception to this scenario, with Ngcaba saying this will not be allowed to happen.

His comments were echoed yesterday by Essop Pahad, minister in the presidency, who says a situation where one person controls SA's domain names cannot be tolerated.

Despite the outrage on both sides, it looks as though some sort of compromise was reached by the communications parliamentary committee on the bill this week. Lawrie has reserved judgment on the amendments until he has studied them, but notes that there appears to be a big improvement in the bill.

The amendments reduce the state's role in the management of domain names, notably by adding a new chapter to the bill which removes the state as shareholder of the section 21 company. There is a strong recognition that the internet belongs to all users, but also that the internet community needs to play a pivotal role as the technology grows.