{"id":116913,"date":"2017-04-19T12:55:56","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T10:55:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=116913"},"modified":"2017-04-19T12:56:30","modified_gmt":"2017-04-19T10:56:30","slug":"how-to-prevent-governments-from-shutting-down-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/broadband\/116913-how-to-prevent-governments-from-shutting-down-the-internet","title":{"rendered":"How to prevent governments from shutting down the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Liquid Telecom\u2019s\u00a0Andrew Alston and Ben Roberts, along with Fiona Asonga of TESPOK, have submitted a policy proposal<\/strong><\/a> to AfriNIC on how to deal with governments shutting down the Internet.<\/p>\n

AfriNIC \u2013 the\u00a0African Network Information Centre \u2013 is\u00a0responsible for the distribution and management of the IP address space (IPv4 and IPv6) and Autonomous System Numbers in Africa and the Indian Ocean region.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0submission states that over the past few years, \u201cmore and more\u201d\u00a0governments have shut down \u201cfree and open access to the Internet in order to push political and other agendas\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese shutdowns have been shown to cause economic damage and hurt the citizens of the affected countries,\u201d states\u00a0the proposal.<\/p>\n

The solution<\/h3>\n

The proposed solution is that if a government orders the blocking of\u00a0access to the general Internet, or attempts to restrict access to\u00a0the Internet by a segment of the population,\u00a0AfriNIC will not allocate resources to the government of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor a period of 12 months following the end of the shutdown, AfriNIC will allocate no resources to the government of the country. This also applies to all government-owned entities and entities that have direct provable relationships with said government.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the event of a transfer policy existing, AfriNIC shall not assist or participate in any transfers to any of the entities above. All sub-allocations of space within said country involving the referred to entities shall equally cease for a period of 12 months.\u201d<\/p>\n

The proposal further states that if a government performs three or more shutdowns in a period of 10 years, \u201call resources to the aforementioned entities shall be revoked and no allocations to said entities shall occur for a period of 5 years\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel that the time has come for action to be taken, rather than just bland statements that have shown to have little or no effect,\u201d states the proposal.<\/p>\n

Plan of action<\/h3>\n

Alston told MyBroadband that submitting policy proposals to AfriNIC is open to anyone, after which they will be tabled for discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the policy was authored, we knew that it wasn\u2019t perfect and it would require some debate and discussion,\u201d said\u00a0Alston.<\/p>\n

He said they will now gather feedback \u2013 some of which states that the current version is too broad \u2013 and release a new draft for further discussion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s an iterative process and hopefully it leads to consensus to get the policy passed by the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may also look at adding an exception for academia for those countries where academia is directly state-controlled.\u201d<\/p>\n

In terms of the effect on countries which are denied resources by AfriNIC,\u00a0Alston said no one really knows exactly what will happen until the measure is implemented.<\/p>\n

\u201cUnless a government requires more space in the 12 months following a shutdown, it probably won\u2019t affect them terribly much,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cHowever, after the third shutdown, their resources would be revoked.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey would have to either go and source addresses elsewhere \u2013 they would turn to the secondary markets or get allocations from an ISP willing to give them the space \u2013 or they would effectively find themselves cut off the Internet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIf they did manage to get resources elsewhere, they would have to renumber their networks. Anyone who has ever renumbered a large network will know this is far from simple to accomplish.\u201d<\/p>\n

This article first appeared on MyBroadband<\/a><\/strong> and is republished with permission.<\/em><\/p>\n

Now read:\u00a0Google to launch Hire<\/a><\/strong><\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Liquid Telecom\u2019s Andrew Alston and Ben Roberts, along with Fiona Asonga of TESPOK, have submitted a policy proposal to AfriNIC on how to deal with governments shutting down the Internet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":226,"featured_media":108645,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8812],"tags":[18627,2378,18369,1227],"class_list":["post-116913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-broadband","tag-government","tag-internet","tag-net-neutrality","tag-shut-down"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/226"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/108645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}