Namespace: Should we care?

It may have been apathy, it may have been fatigue, but on Friday only a hand-full of people pitched to have their say on the future course of domain naming in SA.

The less than 50 individuals, and those they represented by proxy, were unopposed. The outcome of the formation meeting of Namespace South Africa was utterly predictable, with a minimum of debate covering only minor details.

The result is that a group of eight directors will be responsible for the establishment of a non-profit company and to then convince an international body to give them the final say on everything pertaining to domains under the .za suffix, including the widely used .co.za, the gov.za used by government and even the obscure .nom.za, intended for use by individuals.

They will hold power over life and death so far as they will decide on the creation of new sub-domains such as .biz.za, or the deletion of unused or mal-administered domains. When the seemingly inevitable happens and multiple for-profit registrars start competing to handle registrations, they will oversee what will become a multimillion-rand market overnight.

So why did so few care enough to have their say, and is the majority right that we should not care?

Phillip de Wet, News Editor, ITWeb

Meanwhile, the background politics is sure to spice things up a bit, as government could very well decide to prevent these upstarts from giving themselves such power, and it is almost certain that government will eventually demand more control of the organisation.

Now technical types will tell you that a domain name is just so much baggage and that an IP address is the real anchor point for a Web site. The marketer who has spent hundreds of thousands of rands embedding a Web site name into our collective consciousness, and the user who cannot receive e-mail because his hosting domain has changed, may disagree.

The organisers did everything they could to publicise the meeting. It was held in an accessible location. Entry was free. Membership and the accompanying vote is free for anyone with a registered domain name, which already brings the numbers into the thousands, and anyone excluded by virtue of not owning virtual real estate could walk in and buy a vote at a paltry R20.

So why did so few care enough to have their say, and is the majority right that we should not care?

There may be a false assumption in that question that apathy or absence is a vote of confidence. The group of individuals who have acted as midwives for the Namespace birth are well-known in the local Internet industry, as are their motives, and their plans have near-universal agreement among their peers. So why waste time rubber-stamping what they do?

If this played a part, it shows shocking complacency. In a situation where, according to the current ZA space administrator himself, SA could wake up one morning to find the domain system in chaos and the root domain name server missing in action, anyone with an interest should be at least concerned enough to observe everything going off without a hitch.

The only plausible explanation is that the South African Internet community suffers from the same malaise seen in civil society and democratic elections everywhere: people trust others to keep things ticking over and will do nothing but complain once it is too late. No involvement required, just add water.

And that leads to some frightening possibilities. We may wake up, one day in the not-too-distant future, to find that there is no longer a coherent domain system for .za, or that the government has imposed an exorbitant tax on anyone who uses a local domain name, or facing any one of a number of calamities.

Of course that won`t happen, realistically speaking, because a group of less than 50 people do indeed care enough to keep things ticking over. They will continue to do so without compensation or praise, and will keep us safe from domain disaster despite many not even realising they exist.

We can only pray they never need public support in their efforts, because it seems no matter how dedicated and diligent they are, that is one thing they will never be able to muster.