Re: The Green Paper is One Small Component

[Karl Denninger <karl at mcs.net>]

You're very wrong Jim.

For example, look at who owns the current "IANA" root nameservers.

Then consider how many of those have federal funding ties.

When you get done with this little exercise in who is funding this CRITICAL
infrastructure component, you may have a slightly different view of things.

The Internet as a whole has been content to suck at the Federal Teat now 
for years in the form of critical infrastructure and connectivity. 

Now you want to bitch when the people holding the purse come asking for
you to comply with what the believe is US Federal law?

Give me a break.

--
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Karl Denninger (karl at MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin
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On Thu, Mar 19, 1998 at 11:24:22PM +0000, Jim Dixon wrote:
> On Thu, 19 Mar 1998, David W. Morris wrote:
> 
> > The Green Paper:
> > 
> >  1.  Ackowledges the historical role of the US Government in funding
> >      the Internet infrastructure
> 
> Actually it claims that its relatively small cash contribution to the 
> Internet infrastructure provides it with a legal basis for ...
> 
> >  2.  Asserts that careful transistion to a new world is necessary to avoid
> >      disrruption of what has rapidly become an important world wide
> >      resource.
> >  3.  Suggests that some some small finite number of new TLDs be created to
> >      allow careful evaluation of the impact of such a change on the
> >      structure of the internet.
> 
>    4.  Claims that the US government has jurisdiction over the domain name
>        system and the allocation of IP address space.
>  
> > The paper repeatedly asks for comment. This paper is proposed as a roadmap
> > for how the US Government gets out of the internet in a responsible way.
> 
> This Green Paper does say that this is their objective.  But they 
> begin their arguments by carefully grounding their actions in US
> law, specifically by proving that the US has jurisdiction.  
> 
> This may seem harmless now.  It might prove very different when the
> next administration cites this as a legal precedent when it decides,
> for example, that the Internet is a munition, or Cuba should not be
> on the Internet, or whatever else is in the interest of some pressure
> group.
> 
> --
> Jim Dixon                  VBCnet GB Ltd           http://www.vbc.net
> tel +44 117 929 1316                             fax +44 117 927 2015
>