In a flower-filled retirement complex called Haven Village, just off a street named Serene, Mike Lawrie is easily, if unintentionally, the most controversial resident.
[VIDEO]Although entering his third month of retirement from the National Research Foundation in Pretoria, you can bet that SA`s Internet industry hasn`t seen the last of him yet. In between growing his beloved bonsai, doing some consulting work and taking brisk, crack-of-dawn constitutionals at the Haven Village gym, Lawrie is keeping a beady eye on government`s pending takeover of the .za Internet domain namespace.
Administrator of the .za domain for the past eight years, he`s still smarting from the tongue-lashing he took in Parliament in June when his warnings over government`s plans were interpreted as threats to crash the Internet.
"I seemed to have upset the Portfolio Committee on Communications and every politician in the country - but I didn`t cause the ruckus, the politicians did," says Lawrie, who believes he was unjustly portrayed as a pale male clinging doggedly to the past.
[VIDEO]"The point I was making was that the .za domain level has to be absolutely technically stable, otherwise there is a risk - a serious risk - that the Internet will crash. If the new administering authority doesn`t know an IP number from a Web site address, Internet services will grind to a halt.
"That was misinterpreted as a threat, that `Mike Lawrie is going to crash the Internet`. Absolute rubbish. There`s no way that the person who brought the Internet into this country is going to stand by and watch it crash, never mind crashing it."
While none too popular with the politicians, perhaps, Lawrie is widely regarded as one of the founding fathers of the Internet in SA. He led the Rhodes University team that set up the first Internet-style inter-networking in the country, and ran Uninet, the country`s research and academic computer network, until its closure two years ago.
Today, he`s still adamant that government`s got the .za domain debate all wrong, however good its intentions. Like it or not, though, he intends living with the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act and its offending .za domain section. "The Act exists. It`s not going to help if we all run around and say it`s dreadful. Going forward, we have to make the best of it. I will be working with the government as best I can to make it work as best it can."
So Lawrie, although still hoping that government will see the light and change the law, will definitely be at the party when negotiations get going over the setting up of the new domain name authority. "If the process leads to an unworkable product, the option is still there that, given the opinions and support of the rest of the Internet community, I can still refuse to hand over. But that`s not an option that is high on my wish list."
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