[afnog] Breaking News: Kenyan Internet Community comes face to face with new Legislation

[John Walubengo]

Apologies for cross-posting:

It took a KENIC (KEnya Network Information Center, www.kenic.or.ke) Annual General Meeting for the Kenyan Internet community to digest the implication of the a Kenyan ICT Legislation passed more than five months ago.  The law which included sections that touched on the Media, IT, Telecommunication and Postal Services has faced stiff resistance from the Media fraternity while the Internet Community kept a low if not a dead profile.



It was at the KENIC general meeting held today in Nairobi that the Internet Community grappled with the implication of the IT section on the operation of the .KE namespace.  The law specifies that all second level .KE internet domain names must be licensed by the country's converged Regulator, Communication Commission of Kenya.  The law requires that all Registries - those who manage the internet domains - must apply for a license by the 2nd of June 2009.



KENIC, a public-private-partnership has under the ICANN Policies been managing the .KE namespace including the 2nd level sub-domains such as xyz.CO.KE, xyz.OR.KE, etc. From 2nd June 2009, KENIC must seek permission from the Regulator to continue managing these sub-domains.  In an effort to comply with the law, the KENIC Board requested the community to support a resolution that a new legal entity (Special Purpose Vehicle, SPV) be created in order to apply for the license from the Regulator as well as compete with other potential entities that are set to fight in that space.



The proposals opened up heated discussions with some members wondering if KENIC was ceding its hard-won rights & control over the .KE namespace to an exclusive and single entity.  The current governance structure for KENIC provides for a Multistakeholder Partnership over the whole .KE namespace and has the Govt, Academia, Private Sector/Telcos and Civil Society Board Representation that is wholly accountable to Internet Users during Annual General Meetings.  Effectively, the new law takes part of this mandate and places it under one or two of these Stakeholders that is the Regulator/Govt.



Members wondered about the criteria that would be used by the Regulator to award the management licenses to various competitors. Others wondered about the potential conflict between the local legislation and the ICANN policies given that KENIC has currently been operating under ICANN policies but now has to take cognizance of the local law.  For example, if the Regulator granted a license to someone else to manage the "co.ke" subdomain BUT the local internet community for one reason or the other instructed the KENIC Board NOT to accept and transfer the delegation from KENIC how would that be resolved? And yet other members wondered to what extend the proposed SPV would cannibalize their existing markets and services.



It has taken five months of silence but clearly, the Kenyan Internet community is just beginning to understand and feel the heat of some sections in the ICT law that had previously been hijacked and labeled "Media law" at the expense of IT practitioners.  It will be interesting to see how this plays out before and after the 2nd of June 2009 - the date when all subdomain managers must be licensed by the Regulator.



walu