ITWeb (Johannesburg)
Phillip De Wet, Itweb Telecoms Editor
10 September 2002
Johannesburg — Esther Dyson is one member of president Thabo Mbeki's international IT advisory board with whom many grassroots technologists in SA are willing to place their faith. While she is a controversial figure in her own right, she does not represent a specific company like her counterparts who hail from Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.
Esther Dyson: "It is worrying that the South African government is making the same mistakes as the US government."
Visiting SA to take part in the second meeting of the Presidential International Advisory Council on Information Society and Development at the weekend, she was convinced government policy needed some polishing.
"Bandwidth, bandwidth, bandwidth," she said of what she had seen in SA. As a trustee of Bridges.org, a non-profit development organisation based in Cape Town, she has visited start-up IT companies and is under no illusion as to what their greatest problem is.
Many people in SA don't have a bandwidth problem because they don't have basic access, she says, but development of a strong commercial IT sector requires more and cheaper bandwidth. She believes loosening restrictions around satellite operators and the use of wireless access equipment, and encouraging Internet service providers through incentives, is the answer.
She also questions some parts of the recently enacted Electronic Communications and Transactions (ECT) Act. The requirement that providers of cryptography products and services be registered, for example, she finds "a bad idea".
But it is in her views on the domain name provisions of the ECT Act that she is most directly critical of the government. Dyson was for two years the chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the body ultimately responsible for the administration of Web domains such as .com and the local .za. She believes government's move to take control of .za is an error borne from a misconception.
"It is worrying that the South African government is making the same mistakes as the US government," she says. "What they are setting up is too big for what should be a pretty small task; [the domain body] shouldn't be doing that much."
The ECT Act calls for a government-run domain name authority to make policy around .za names, something furiously opposed by current .za administrator Mike Lawrie and Namespace, the body due to take over his responsibilities.
The government has argued that it needs policy control in order to stimulate the use of local languages on the Internet and to ensure that more South Africans get access to the network, but Dyson disagrees.
"[Domain names] just have nothing to do with Internet usage. One thing that ICANN does know is that it has nothing to do with solving the digital divide. The question of getting people access to the Internet is answered long before they start needing a domain name."
In terms of the ECT Act, the .za space will be controlled by a board of nine directors selected through a complex process but ultimately appointed by the minister of communications.
Dyson says domain policy should be set by a small board elected by holders of domain names and not by government. Such a board, she notes, should have "maybe one government member, one private sector member and one NGO member".
Namespace has a similar vision for the future of .za but the Department of Communications largely dismissed its views.
Yet Dyson has little hope that Namespace will triumph if the parties cannot settle their differences. She expects ICANN to side with the government if it is asked to arbitrate.
The president's international IT advisory concluded its meeting on Sunday. Namespace is holding its annual general meeting on Friday and movement on the establishment of the government domain authority is expected shortly.
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