[ppml] PI assignment subdelegation?

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:ppml-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of
>Kevin Kargel
>Sent: Tuesday, March 20, 2007 2:38 PM
>To: ppml at arin.net
>Subject: Re: [ppml] PI assignment subdelegation?
>
>
>> I guess the question is do you want the ARIN Guidelines you
>> cited above to be treated as laws or merely administrative
>> directives?  The posts to this list appear to indicate people
>> do not want them treated as having the force of law.  In that
>> case then you can interpret them as administrative guidelines
>> and since the one company owns the other, company A's network
>> is "company b's network" thus the same block can be used for both.
>>
>> Whether you would atually want to do this is a different issue.
>>
>> Ted
>>
>
>Of course we don't want ARIN "Guidelines" to be delivered with force of
>law.  The one thing that has kept the internet going this far is the
>combination of anarchy and the cooperation of the netizens.  The surest
>way to crash the internet or at a minimum to place it beyond the reach
>of the common man will be to make internet policy legitable.
>

It already is legitable, didn't you follow the Kremen lawsuit we just
discussed?  DNS has been so for a long time now.

The reason the IP number allocations have worked cooperatively so far
is simply that there have been more numbers than what people needed.
It is in everyone's self-interest to be helpful because it doesen't
hurt you and the good karma might come back one day.

Where the real test will be is when helping someone will hurt you and
the good karma may never come back.  That will be the case if IPv4
allocations run out and the backbone has not been switched over to IPv6.
If someone needs IPv4 to help them you have to give something up that
you likely will never get back.

>The moment that the internet is under government control it will be
>taxed to pay for the agency.  Who wants to start that ball rolling?  We
>could, but let's not..
>

I think your mistaking what I am saying.  I am not advocating for
government control.  I am saying that if we mismanage it that we will
be forced into government control, and since it appears people do not
want that, then by golly, don't screw things up.

>We are talking about something that is more widespread than government,
>perhaps even bigger than any government.  The internet has thus far been
>more productive and functional than any government on the planet.  Wars
>and violence on the internet have been comparatively well managed and
>controlled by the citizenry and by consensual policy.  If anything we
>should be remodeling our governments in the form of the internet, not
>subjecting the internet to the force of 'legal' governance.
>
>In any case it is neigh impossible to universally subject the internet
>to law, because who's law would you use?

That is what the UN does.  And governments across the world have had
no trouble getting together and using that apparatus when something
happens that the majority of them consider a threat to their self interest.
Such as for example the cooperation on copyright.  And the cooperation on
having a fairly stable rate of exchange of currency.

People that think the UN is ineffective simply do not understand that
what is in a governments self-interest is not usually in a person's self
interest.  It is for example in very few governments self-interest to
help the starving children in Africa that is why there have been starving
children in Africa since the UN was formed.  People do not want to believe
that helping starving children isn't in a governments self-interest so
they continue to hand-wring over the ineffectiveness of the UN of solving
this problem.

>An example is the
>proliferation of offshore gambling, music and video sharing,  and other
>"illegal" (by U.S.A. law) activities.  The U.S. laws have done virtually
>nothing to quell such activity even within the U.S. borders.
>

That is lumping a lot of stuff that is very dissimilar into one pot.
Offshore gambling helps get money out of the US economy so many governments
support it.  music and video sharing only harm the producers of music
and video and so only governments of countries that have a large number of
such producers really care about spending money to stop it, and there aren't
a lot of countries like that.  You are not going to get world government on
any issue that governments and countries don't agree with.

But this you see is the problem.  While you probably could successfully
get the world's governments at odds with each other over allowing stuff
like online gambling, and thus online gamblers would be left alone,
since all of the world's governments benefit from a smooth running Internet
they would rather quickly band together and take over governance of
it if they felt the existing structure was letting it collapse.

Governments usually have no problem cooperating on issues that they agree
on even while at the same time having issues they violently disagree with.
Much more so than people, in fact.

>We have a model that works.  If it works please don't fix it!
>

There will not be time to fix it if it breaks under stress.  And the
runout of IPv4 will put very much stress on it.  That is why, after all,
that the IPv4 Countdown Policy ended up getting advanced even though
everyone hates it.  People do recognize the danger of the head in the sand
"leave it alone it ain't broke" approach.

The bright spot here is that if we do manage the rundown of IPv4
with a minimum of trouble then it will be in the world's governments
self-interest to leave us alone.  But that will not happen by doing
nothing about the problem and expecting the free market will step in and
take care of the problem, or by simply telling everyone to migrate to
IPv6 and sitting back and expecting that to magically happen by itself
as well.

Ted