Sushi Dot So Domain

(So desu ne!)*

Biyokulule Online

January 08, 2010

 

Last month, Villa Somalia gave Somalis, both inside and in the Diaspora, a sharp shock. The event which roused the most interest, and which left many Somalis arguing long after it was revealed, was when a Japanese company, GMO Registry, became the technical internet operator of the “.SO”, the top-level domain (TLD) of the Republic of Somalia.

 

Selling Somali domain name to GMO Registry has more than an economic nature than a political one. Unlike the depleted “.com” domain, the “.SO” domain is relatively an all new internet domain name, with wide-open availability. And al-Sheikhs in Villa Somalia are most likely cashing in on this shortage of internet name space by selling “.SO” domain, and in the process are getting rich, at least, from kickbacks and perks. What’s more is that the ownership of top-level domain name (TLD) “.SO” by a foreign firm means that al-Sheikhs tend to have no faith in Somalia.

 

Selling “.SO” Domain possibly emerged as a “bulldozer” policy amidst a power struggle between former Union of Islamic Courts (UIC) members, where the group that now rules Villa Somalia wants to push the others to the exit.

 

As writer Fulmen states, “People in Mogadishu speak of presidential-level involvement and a 10 million dollar sum which changed hands”. [Read below] The dominant role that these funds gained from the transactions between Villa Somalia and GMO Registry could play is that it also lends support to the re-election of the al-Sheikhs this year.

 

Notwithstanding the enormous pain of managing a broken-down country without a functional government for over 20 years is graspable; however, most of the staff in Villa Somalia is from inception budgetary burdens, for they siphon off the little money that the international community have pledged to Somalia. Moreover, due to lack of managerial competence, poorly defined government tasks, interference, and abuse of monopoly power are attributed for the colossal squandering of public resources.

 

Therefore, the need is for enough Somali media to cover ‘Sushi Dot So Domain’ news stories and focus on Somali collaborators. It is no use blaming only foreign firms, for buying what was already on the market for sale for too long. And if there were effective governments in Somalia, this issue would not arise. For the al-Sheikhs, selling Somali Domain name was seen as a necessary “bulldozing” tool for securing the seat of the government, pushing aside the threat posed by the Shabab rebels.

 

* So desu ne is a Japanese term which could be translated in many ways. In this context, the author meant the expression as “hmmm” or “that's so, isn't it?"

 

Roobdoon Forum

Toronto, Canada

 

L E T T E R*

 

 

Republic of Somalia

Office of the President

 

May 14, 2010

  

Mr. Rod Beckstrom

President and Chief Executive Officer

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

4676 Admiralty Way, Suite 330

Marina del Rey, CA 90292

 

Dear Beckstrom,

 

I am writing to you on behalf of the Somali government concerning the .so country code top level domain. In addition to reiterating that we designate GMO Registry "as the appropriate entity to hold the delegation of authority by the ICANN for administrative authority of the .so country code top level domain (ccTLD)," this letter is to provide ICANN with additional details regarding that designation.

 

The Somali government's recognition of GMO Registry is subject to it operating within the provisions of its organization constitution (please see attached) and to the fulfillment by GMO Registry of the conditions outlined in GMO's Memorandum & Articles of Association, Letter dated 21st April, 2010 from Internet Commission of Somalia to the Ministry of Post & Telecommunications confirming GMO as the appropriate entity to administer the .so ccTLD and further requesting the Ministry of Post & Telecommunications to subsequently endorse GMO to ICANN as the appropriate delegee of the .so ccTLD; and seek to reflect the following:

 

Given that the Internet naming system is a public resource and the exercise of a top level domain (TLD) delegation must be in the public interest, GMO Registry recognizes that the management and administration of the .so ccTLD are subject to the ultimate authority of the Internet Commission of Somalia;

 

GMO Registry agrees to comply with ICANN developed policies, and to ensure payment of its contribution to ICANNs cost of operation.

 

Should there be a redelegation of the .so ccTLD, GMO Registry agrees to cooperate and comply with the requirements of the Internet Commission of Somalia and/or ICANN in order to facilitate the transfer and redelegation of authority for the .so ccTLD from GMO Registry to another party

 

The Somali government through Internet Commission of Somalia commits to fulfill its role as envisioned in the "Principles for the Delegation and Administration of Country Code Top Level Domains" adopted by the ICANN Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) on 23 February 2000. As you know, Internet Commission of Somalia has been the Somali participant in the GAC since 2001 and supports the GAC as the appropriate vehicle for governments to participate in the ICANN process. In particular, the Somali government participated in the development of the GAC Principles, and has endorsed them as sound best practices for the delegation and administration of ccTLDs

 

Under clause 8.1 of the GAC Principles, the Somali government designates GMO Registry as the delegee of the .so ccTLD and requests that ICANN enter into the three-way communication-based regime, as envisioned by the GAC Principles, to provide a framework of accountability for the management of the .so ccTLD.

 

If you wish to discuss any aspect of the above designation of GMO Registry as delegee of the .so ccTLD, please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

Yours sincerely,

Abdulkareem H. Jama

Chief of Staff and Senior Adviser to the President

Transitional Federal Government

Mogadishu, Somalia

Office - 2525-941-000

Mobile - 2526-248-8880

2521-548-8880

Email - ajama@sompresidency.org

 

* Roobdoon Forum could not independently verify the authenticity of the letter.

 

JAPAN – ONE OF THE TOP PIRATES IN SOMALIA

From Fish-Poacher To Domain-poacher

By Venatrix Fulmen

Ecoterra International*

December 29, 2010

 

Japanese corporate kleptomania in bed with anarchic state

 

Not only does Japan steal precious tuna from Somalia, now they robbed the country's top-level domain. That piracy is all about business is known since the days of the Barbary wars, but in Somalia it has now taken on new dimensions.

 

DOMAIN-PIRATES

 

Japan just poached the impoverished country's top-level Internet domain, the so called Top Level Country Code (TLCC) dot SO (.so), at a time when the state of the embattled nation is at an all-time low.

 

"Governed" only for the sake of whitewashing the dealings of their UN-, US- and EU-masters by a Transitional Federal Government, which rules over two roads, a villa and the air-and seaport with he help of mercenary troops from US- and EU-paid African nations assembled in the African Union (AU), Somalia continues to be pillaged again and again by the UN, the U.S., the EU, the AU and other robber-baron-conglomerates. Under the oversight of a pseudo-governmental parliament, whose members were chain-selected by the UN, who is playing on the one hand the role of an overlord towards the Somalis and on the other the stir-up holder for the interests of the most powerful UN member states like U.S., France and the UK, the robbery continues even in cyberspace.

 

Japan - now closing shoulders with the U.S. in the emerging power-games with China and Russia - has a particular role and uses that window to fill their own pockets.

 

FISH-PIRATES

 

It has finally been accepted as fact even by those, who have a hidden agenda of different dimension, that fish-poaching and toxic-waste dumping prompted the helpless Somalis to take up arms against the foreign pirates. Somaalis are shot now out of these waters, but prosecution of the real culprits, especially British money-sharks in close liason with the shipping-insurance-industry is so far lacking. In turn not all but many Somali sea-shifta must now also rightfully be termed pirates themselves, because they learned and entered the game of internationally organized crime-syndicates, who have mastered the sea-jacking sector by targeting valuable merchant ships, which is then in turn used to foster the imperialist intentions of larger navies.

 

But what is still often denied and even covered up by the multinational armada of anti-piracy navies, is the rampant fish-poaching in Somali waters and the Indian Ocean at large. This continues unabated and is pseudo-mastered by corrupt, biased or incapable organizations like the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission IOTC, a sidekick of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and their voracious representatives of member states. Here colonial powers like France still have a lot to say, since island-states in the Indian Ocean like La Reuinion and La Moyette, were never returned to their original inhabitants. Not only do these provide for nice tax-heavens of La Francophonie, but these colonies constitute vast exclusive economic zones on the Indian Ocean and now even for the exclusive rights concerning the seabed extending for 350nm. A similar scam was just these dayss revealed by leaked U.S.-embassy cable, describing the fraudulent dealings of the UK concerning the Chagos islands with infamous U.S.base Diego Garcia and the British grand plan to robb the Chagossians of their homeland. All these neo-colonial games are the real background and agenda for the enhances naval presence in the Indian Ocean of a huge armada of warships dispatched under the disguise of anti-piracy operations.

 

Japan entered the anti-piracy games early, because it gave them the opportunity to deploy large P3 Orion marine-observation planes, paid for by their taxpayers, to assist their own, and affiliated, fishing fleets in the Indian Ocean to spot, track and catch the large tuna swarms that follow the millennia-old clockwork of the magnificent tuna migration in the Indian Ocean

 

From Fish-Poacher To Domain-poacher

 

The “sponsoring organization” of the top-level domain (TLD) is said to be the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications of Somalia, whose minister was just sacked, but people in Mogadishu speak of presidential-level involvement and a 10 million dollar sum which changed hands. In an interview with infamous domain investor Rick Latona, known also as the Tasmanian Devil of the domain industry and flopped auctions of domains like www.stripclub.com, the Director of the Japanese domain pirate GMO registry, Hiro Tsukahara, didn't shy away from invoking even the dirtiest of all corporate tricks by announcing "they will donate a portion of the operating profit to provide necessary aide for Somalia, especially for children."

 

Somalis might have soon to attend one of Rick Latona's auctions, where he hawks promising domain names. There then domains like www.muslim.so will come under the hammer like www.stripclub.com. Latona even didn't shy away from plagiarism by grabbing T.R.A.F.F.I.C. as title for his sales-conferences, a term, which he obviously just copied from the wildlife trade monitoring network of the WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature).

 

No wonder the domain-thieves from Japan found also a friend in Germany, who even before WWII served as the best partner for a fascist Japan. A domain-reseller in form of the Key-Systems GmbH located in St. Ingbert, Germany is a willing collaborator in the scam. Founded by Alexander Siffrin in 1998, and run by him as a defacto one-man show, he proclaims to hold subsidiaries in the war-run USA and drug-run Mexico. Key-Systems CEO, Alexander Siffrin, was "welcomed to their project" by the Japanese top-pirate and his U.S. backer.

 

The example of the former Yugoslavia after the break up and another one from similar chaotic Sudan shows that this fraudulent Japanese registration of the TLD of Somalia is a case for nullification, and people should be warned about buying anything from the Japanese for the time being.

 

The ICANN evaluation procedure was clearly bent, since it states:

 

1.The prospective manager supervises and operates the domain name from within the country represented by the TLD; (ICP-1 §a; RFC 1591 §3.1)

 

2.The prospective administrative contact must reside in the country represented by the TLD. (ICP-1 §a; RFC 1591 §3.1)

 

But the company GMOregistry is operating from Japan, and manages Somalia’s top-domain from Japan, and has no links with or presence in Somalia other than through this clandestine deal and their Somali accomplices. In short, the domain is administered and technically managed from Japan.

 

It is obvious that the Japanese, and those who took the money, will now be quick to cover their tracks and set up something like an administrative contact in war-embattled Mogadishu, protected by UN and AMISOM, but perhaps there is still hope that the vast majority of the internet community will expose this, and that the deal will finally be cancelled.

 

The case should be taken even further, and the intricate links between UN politics and the interests of the robber-barons, who run their own nation-states for personal gains, must be exposed. Japan set up a so-called "Trust-Fund" for anti-piracy activities, which so far, have mostly turned out to be just anti-Somali activities, and tries thereby to cover its own marine-resources. Stealing networks has provided large amounts of money from this fund to UN organizations like the IMO, the UNODC, UNDP and UNPOS.

 

How come earlier applications filed by a group of Somali scholars, intellectuals and university professors to ICANN, (the U.S. self-appointed watchdog of the internet) was completely neglected? The academic group wanted to run the domain independently through the Somali National University in the spirit of a free Internet -- a just and non-profit body for the benefit of all Somalis, but their work circumvented with this deal, and the UN through their International Post and Telecommunications Union (IPTU) clearly has their hands in the dirty game.

 

The Somali youth, whose future is also with the Internet, might find their own ways to deal with corrupt officials and foreign fraudsters.

 

The first threats have already appeared on the Internet, which is a sea full of monsters worse than in the oceans infested with fish-poaching pirates from Japan or their vassals.

 

If there is any honour left with the Japanese - we should witness them now committing Seppuku (切腹) or harakiri for robbing the destitute

 

*Ecoterra International is an environmental group monitoring maritime activity in the region.

 

Somalia Puts Itself Back Together
LiquidAfrica Holding Limited
November 11, 2004

 

Nov 11, 2004 (LiquidAfrica) -- As Somalia puts itself back together again, there are moves to try and get the country domain name administration re-delegated to a local organisation.

 

It is currently being run World Class that is owned by a Somali living in the United States. Abdigani Jama, Secretary-General of the Somali Telecom is angry at the slow process: I e-mailed ICANN but I’ve not yet had a reply.

 

When we wanted to get our telephone country code (252) back from the ITU, it happened almost immediately. What's the difference? ICANN procedures mean that any re-delegation needs to demonstrate that those applying have a wide range of support within the sector.

 

© 2004 Liquid Africa, All Rights Reserved.

 

Global Internet Corporation To Launch Specific Internet Namespace for Africa

IT News Africa

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

 

Unattributed report: "The Case for DotAfrica Domain Name for Africa"

 

With a population of one billion, Africa hosts 86 millions of Internet users. The penetration rate is 8.7% which is rather good compared to the world average of 26.9%.

 

DotAfrica is that specific Internet namespace for Africa which is likely to be applied for operation during the next round of new Generic Top-Level Domains (GTLds) which the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will be launching in the near future.

 

The introduction of the DotAfrica will create an attractive regional home for the Pan-African Internet community; as the first sponsored registry to be operating from Africa and therefore serving the specific needs of its communities. It will echo ongoing operation and successes of other sister community TLDs such as DotEu (DotEuropa) and DotAsia which have created a new Internet identity for their users and business who seek more regional presence without being confined within the limits of one country.

 

The Domain name DotAfrica is to contribute to the development of Internet on the African continent and proposes to re-invest back proceeds into the social and technological advancement initiatives within the community. A revenue allocation structure will be adopted by the DotAfrica registry to guarantee that a portion of revenues will be directly re-invested into the community through a grant program.

 

DotAfrica will be adding value to the namespace as a recognizable phrase which focuses on the Africa identity. It is likely to capture the essence of the community served. Indeed, DotAfrica will serve a community which spans over a large portion of region, therefore providing registrants with accrued possibilities for establishing their Internet presence.

 

The project has been presented to the Experts session of the CITMC-3 (Conference of Ministers in charge of Communication and Information Technologies) which started in Abuja, Nigeria, on 3 August 2010. The ministerial session, scheduled to take place from 6 to 7 August is expected to mandate the African Union to implement the Dot Africa on behalf of the Member States in cooperation and partnerships with relevant stakeholders and institutions, including the preparation and the submission of the DotAfrica application to ICANN.

 

(Description of Source: Johannesburg IT News Africa in English  A privately-owned website that claims to be the "premier" source of reporting on African information and communication technology; URL: http://www.itnewsafrica.com)

 

© Compiled and distributed by NTIS, US Dept. of Commerce. All rights reserved.

 

Uncle Sam is watching YOU

By Paul Marks

Review of African Political Economy
Vol. 32, No. 104/105, pp. 462-464
Jun. - Sep., 2005

 

Whenever you surf the web, send emails or download music, an unseen force is at work in the background, making sure you connect to the sites, inboxes and databases you want. The name of this brooding presence? The US government.

 

Some 35 years after the US military invented the internet, the US Department of Commerce retains overall control of the master computers that direct traffic to and from every web and email address on the planet.

 

But a group convened by the UN on 18 July 2005 to thrash out the future of the net is calling for an end to US domination of the net, proposing that instead a multinational forum of governments, companies and civilian organisations is created to run it.

 

The UN's Working Group on Internet Governance (WGIG) says US control hinders many developments that might improve it. These range from efforts to give the developing world more affordable net access to coming up with globally agreed and enforceable measures to boost net privacy and fight cybercrime.

 

US control also means that any changes to the way the net works, including the addition of new domain names such as .mobi for cellphone-accessed sites, have to be agreed by the US, whatever experts in the rest of the world think. The flipside is that the US could make changes without the agreement of the rest of the world.

 

In a report issued in Geneva in Switzerland on 14 July, the WGIG seeks to overcome US hegemony. 'The internet should be run multilaterally, transparently and democratically. And it must involve all stakeholders,' says Markus Kummer, a Swiss diplomat who is executive coordinator of the WGIG.

 

So why is the internet's overarching technology run by the US?

 

The reason is that the net was developed there in the late 1960s by the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in a bid to create a communications medium that would still work if a Soviet nuclear strike took out whole chunks of the network. This medium would send data from node to node in self-addressed 'packets' that could take any route they liked around the network, avoiding any damaged parts.

 

Today the internet has 13 vast computers dotted around the world that translate text-based email and web addresses into numerical internet protocol (IP) node addresses that computers understand. In effect a massive look-up table, the 13 computers are collectively known as the Domain Name System (DNS). But the DNS master computer, called the master root server, is based in the US and is ultimately controlled by the Department of Commerce. Because the data it contains is propagated to all the other DNS servers around the world, access to the master root server file is a political hot potato.

 

Currently, only the US can make changes to that master file. And that has some WGIG members very worried indeed. 'It's about who has ultimate authority,' says Kummer.

 

In theory, the US could decide to delete a country from the master root server. Some people expect this to happen one day, even though the US has never abused its position in that way.

 

Unilateral US action is unlikely, however. The DNS system is managed on behalf of the Department of Commerce by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), a not for-profit company. 'Our job is to make sure internet addressing happens stably and securely,' says Theresa Swinehart, ICANN's general manager for global partnerships. And it does so, she says, in conjunction with its government advisory committee (GAC), which includes members from 100 countries to ensure diversity of opinion.

 

Even Kummer admits that ICANN does a good job on achieving international consensus, at least regarding changes to the DNS. 'ICANN scores quite highly on involving all stakeholders. Anyone can go to a meeting, take the microphone and give a view,' he says. The problem? It's an ad hoc process. And with the internet now a critical global resource, some governments, particularly in developing countries such as China, India and Brazil, want a forum where vast swathes of internet policy - from cybercrime to spam to privacy protection - can be both discussed and acted on.

 

Only then, they say, can vital non-DNS issues such as the high cost of net connections to many developing countries be made fairer. Right now, the WGIG report notes, internet service providers based in countries that are remote from the internet backbone links - the large 'fat pipes' connecting continents - must pay the full cost of connecting to these networks. This can be prohibitively expensive for developing nations and there is no 'appropriate and effective global internet governance mechanism to resolve it'.

 

The WGIG put forward a number of options for change, all of which include enhancing the roles of ICANN and the GAC or the formation of a new allembracing internet policy body that would be in charge of ICANN instead of the US. The WGIG's proposals will now go to the vote at the International Telecommunication Union's World Summit on the Information Society in Tunisia this November. Whatever the WGIG decides, it will have a tough time changing the US government's opinion. Only last month, US assistant secretary of commerce Michael Gallagher reasserted America's claim to the heart of the net.

 

The US is committed to taking no action that would have the potential to adversely impact the effective and efficient operation of the DNS and will therefore maintain its historic role in authorising changes or modifications to the authoritative root zone file.

 

Battle, it seems, is about to begin.

 

© New Scientist, 30 July 2005.

 

Compiled by: Roobdoon Forum

Toronto, Canada