The Internet's Vietnam

[Jim Fleming <JimFleming at doorstep.unety.net>]

On Friday, March 20, 1998 11:03 AM, Rick H. Wesson[SMTP:wessorh at ar.com] wrote:
@
@Randy,
@
@you hit the nail on the head. it seems as though no one trusts anyone on
@issues surounding the root servers. how to fix that i don't know, but it
@sure would be good if we could foster communication, understanding and
@trust (CUT) ; rather than FUD. 
@
@CUT FUD =)
@

There is a lot of trust. The entire Internet is a collection
of trust relationships. If it were true that no one trusted
anyone, then we could return to the days where people
had PCs on their desks, not connected to anything or
anyone. All that is good for is check book balancing,
some word processing and video games.

What you might be observing is that people do not trust
the leaders whom everyone in the past blindly followed.
This is true. One of the reasons why people do not trust
those leaders is because of the number of times they
have mislead people and tried to manipulate the future
of the Registry Industry with no apparent purpose other
than to play academic games.

The games are over. The U.S. Government now has a
clear picture of what has been going on and where U.S.
taxpayers money has been wasted. They clearly intend
to fix this and when they do the Registry Industry might
be able to recover by the end of the century. The damage
that has been done to the economy, to society and to
the Internet community has been massive. Historians
will likely spend the next 50 years studying what went
on in the DNS wars of the 90s.

As people have said in the past, this is the "Internet's Vietnam".
I* leaders felt that they had to destroy villages (RSCs
and new TLD registries) in order to "save them". The
question still remains, "save them from what?". Save
them from growing and propering and providing more
jobs and education and innovation ? Save them from
helping to distribute the registration load around the
world and help provide better service than the 6 to 8
week turn-around advertised by the .US domain ?

In my opinion, there is still a lot of trust in the Internet
and it is now growing. As the U.S. Government polices
the transition and restores freedom this trust will grow.
As regions like Europe finally realize that they need
to build their own infrastructure as they are NOW doing
with RIPE CENTR, the trust will grow. As more countries
and regions like Australia and the Caribbean begin to
put their RSCs in place, the trust will grow.

The key to all of this is that the decision making is now
out of the hands of one person. The Internet now has a
chance to grow, which it was not allowed to do.
-
Jim Fleming
Unir Corporation
IBC, Tortola, BVI