.za.net and .za.org to stop providing free domains in October :(

w1z4rd

w1z4rd

Karmic Sangoma
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This will not be a problem for people who registered before October this year.

he primary reason for starting this project in 1998 was to provide an affordable alternative to the domain name prices of the time. Back in the late '90s a .com domain name could easly set you back as much as $100! Today the Internet is a very different place with a .com domain being available for as little as around $8. Even in the primary market we served (South Africa), co.za domains are just R50 per year and org.za domains are free for non-profit organisations.

Unfortunately just as the Internet has become a better place (cheaper!) it has also become a worse place in the last 14 years. Today the admin overhead of managing domain names registered purely for spam or scamming purposes has made running a free, community serving project such as ZA NiC just not fun anymore. And that is our secondary reason for ceasing new registrations.

Just because we will no longer be taking new registrations, it does NOT mean any existing domains will cease to function. Domains registered before 31/10/2012, with valid and responding nameservers, will continue to be served by us indefinitely. The modification system for keeping contact and domain name details up to date will also continue to work as it does today.
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http://www.za.net/

This frustrates me. They are not even thinking. Pisses me off that the .za.net and .za.org domains are controlled by a foreign service. There are many checks and balances they can do to maintain the system including something like linking it to Facebook accounts :(

Ive asked them several times to please let a South African company with more resources handle the systems and no one from there has ever contacted me back. This is a sad day for South African domains :( This can still be managed, but not under the current autocracy. I wish before just killing the new registrations they would communicate with South Africans becase we can make a plan!

Would be nice if rpm could contact these people, perhaps negotiate something with them on our behalf :(
 
I've been trying to register a domain with them from last year. I gave up. They never responded to my requests.
 
It's hosted and run by south Africans living in London... I know the guys.
 
Sinbad said:
It's hosted and run by south Africans living in London... I know the guys.
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Can you speak to them for us? Honestly, there are several south african ISPs that would be willing to work together to keep the service going :(
 
Daniedj said:
I've been trying to register a domain with them from last year. I gave up. They never responded to my requests.
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I have registered a few domains with them without any problems. Sad news indeed :(
 
ghoti said:
Can you speak to them for us? Honestly, there are several south african ISPs that would be willing to work together to keep the service going :(
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Will direct them to this here thread...
 
manbearpig said:
What is the issue?
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The continued existence of .za.net and .za.org for South Africans. What these chaps have started was brilliant. It has now become part and parcel of the South African online community.

There is no demand, demand, demand. There is offer, offer, offer. Myself and many other ISPs would love to take over this free service and continue offering it for free. We can hire full time staff for it and spend more of our time and resources into improving the system (would love to be able to implement automatic name server management for consumers and an API for developers).

We can afford to keep the services running, and we want to.
 
Sinbad said:
By south Africans ;)
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They seem to be getting on in life and are tired of this. Im sure it requires a lot of their time. What they started has helped many people. We can employ people to manage this in SA. Servers are cheap. Even if its just to manage registrations to their database. Its easy to engineer a system to cull the spammers and offer more value and easier management.
 
ghoti said:
They seem to be getting on in life and are tired of this. Im sure it requires a lot of their time. What they started has helped many people. We can employ people to manage this in SA. Servers are cheap. Even if its just to manage registrations to their database. Its easy to engineer a system to cull the spammers and offer more value and easier management.
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I've sent them the link.
 
ld13 said:
R.I.P ZANiC :(
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There's a big difference between giving notice that future registrations will not be accepted, and the domain service ceasing to exist, however this might be the first nail in the coffin and that would be very sad.
 
j4ck455 said:
There's a big difference between giving notice that future registrations will not be accepted, and the domain service ceasing to exist
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True true, but not being able to register new .za.net domains after the cut-off date makes ZANiC dead in my eyes.
 
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