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NamesCon Europe cancelled — “pandemics suck”

Kevin Murphy, March 17, 2021, Domain Services

The year’s NamesCon Europe conference has been cancelled.

The organizers said today that the 2021 event, which had been due to take place in Budapest this June, will not go ahead due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic:

Since Hungary still has a high rate of COVID infections and in-person gatherings are not allowed, we cannot produce NamesCon Europe in Budapest in July. Nobody can predict when things will improve and our recent NamesCon survey showed a high reluctance to travel, so planning this intimate in-person gathering didn’t make sense. Pandemics suck.

Unlike ICANN 71, which was last week rescheduled from The Hague to Zoom, NamesCon is not moving to the bespoke online platform it used last year.

Organizers said that they’re not setting a new date yet, but there appears to be the possibility of other online events in future.

Hungary currently ranks 4th-worst in terms of deaths per capita, according to Statista, sandwiched between the UK and Italy, two of the earliest and hardest-hit countries.

It’s currently seeing more daily cases and deaths than the UK in absolute numbers, despite having less than a sixth of the population.

ALL .za domains have to link to government coronavirus web site

Kevin Murphy, March 30, 2020, Domain Policy

The South African government has decreed that every web site using a .za domain name must now carry a link to an official government coronavirus advice site.

The regulation (pdf), which largely focuses on other types of teleconmmunications services, came into effect last Thursday. It states:

Internet sites operating within .zaDNA top level domain name must have a landing page with a visible link to www.sacoronavirus.co.za

The rule applies to every site, not just those purveying health news.

ZADNA’s front page currently features this clickable graphic, slightly below the fold.

ZADNA site

ZADNA is the registry for .za, but also the city gTLDs .joburg and .capetown. The wording of the regulation suggests that these two gTLDs are also covered by the rule, but official government communications make no mention of either.

The rules also require fake coronavirus news to be blocked, but that’s on the ISPs to implement.

You may notice that the government’s domain is SAcoronavirus.co.za. This appears to be because coronavirus.co.za currently belongs to a domainer. That bare-bones site has a non-clickable link to the government site, and also an offer to sell the domain.