[AfrICANN-discuss] Internet regulation at national level?

[Adiel Akplogan]

Dear all,

First of all I think the discussion is getting real and start touching 
on some fundamental questions that we need to address in our region and 
which are the bottom-line for what we all seems to be looking for: 
Internet (and maybe more generally ICT) development in Africa for a 
sustainable socio-economical impact. 

In the mean time I have spot on an important issue raised several time 
in recent posts, which I would like us to get specific about and try 
to, in one hand understand the issue and in other hand look at way to 
address them efficiently. It is about IP address **regulation**.

On 2012-10-31, at 09:48 AM, Pierre Lotis NANKEP <lnankep at yahoo.fr> wrote:

> I also heard that we should regulate IP numbers and domain names at
> national level. Well and good but how could this be done when IPs are
> administered globally(iana/nro) and regionally through afrinic?
> 
> >>Please let us organise a Webinar on this topic... So some will
> >>have the opportunity to make some présentation in details.

Just before going further on this, AfriNIC has initiated a Government 
Working Group open to Government Reps and Regulators with the goal to 
proactively create a framework for discussion and dialogue at that level 
on IP address and related issues. The working groups also have a mailing 
list afgwg-discuss at afrinic.net and several countries have already 
appointed liaison to that working group (http://meeting.afrinic.net/afgwg). 
You can also use that forum to have this discussion with a wider Africa 
regulators/governments audience.

Coming back to the point, Pierre N. and others on the list who have 
expressed concern in that area, can you be a bit more specify? Pierre has  
mentioned WHOIS services and data accuracy that need to be regulated. 
Putting aside the scary word "regulation" here, I will agree that WHOIS 
related issues are important to look at in our region. So in order to 
move the discussion forward, what are the "regulation" measures that you 
think government should take to solve the problem of accuracy? What are 
regulators doing right now to encourage Network Operator in their 
respective jurisdiction to properly register and update their IP addresses 
usage in the public WHOIS database already provided by AFRINIC? Can that 
already be a starting point? 

In April this year we have received a Policy proposal "AfriNIC Whois 
Database Clean-up" AFPUB-2012-GEN-001-DRAFT-01 (still under discussion)
which, if approved by the community, will trigger a process to cleanup 
our IP address WHOIS database. That proposal in fact reinforced the fact 
that the issue of WHOIS data accuracy is also of concern for operators 
as well. How are regulators contributing to the debate and the elaboration 
of such a policy? How can this be efficiently translated into the local 
framework without creating unnecessary additional layer of bureaucracy 
and/or complexity? Simply put, what is your take on the policy proposal? 

I would encourage you and anyone interested to contribute to the 
discussion that is happening on that specific policy for instance by 
joining AFRINC RPD mailing list at rpd at afrinic.net]. More about our 
open Policy development Process can be found at: 

http://www.afrinic.net/en/community/policy-development

Finally I would like to take on your suggestion to have a webminar session 
on the topic. AFRINIC will be happy to provide the logistic for it. But in 
order to plan it well, we will need to know how many people are interested 
first.

Thank you.

- a.


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