[arin-ppml] Legacy Space authority

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Here in the US we do not have active hot wars going on over 
> the Louisiana Purchase, but they most definitely have them 
> going on in the Mid East with regards to Israel's land ownership.

But in Canada there has been a low-level hot war going on for over
20 years, specifically with regard to who owns the land occupied
by aboriginal peoples when Europeans first claimed land in North
America. Not too many people have been killed, but there have
been several armed confrontations.

> Eventually one day the allocation of IP addresses is going to 
> be formalized in a law somewhere in some government - and 
> they will base that law on the precident that's being created 
> right now by people doing what they are doing today - and 
> that's being created partly by "opinions we may state on this list"

No, none of it is being created by opinions on this list. However,
some of it may very well be based on opinions handed down by Canada's 
Supreme Courts regarding aboriginal land claims. Vast areas of land
have been recognized as being owned by aboriginal peoples, and where
that land is now occupied by cities, the courts have ordered
compensation
to be paid. It is a hugely complex area of law, and since it is
a form of international law (the law between sovereign nations)
it could very well form a precedent for how international law 
develops in regard to "Internet properties".
> It already is.  The entire IPv6 allocation system is based on how
> we do things with IPv4.

People are proposing some breaks with the past in regards to IPv4.
I'm not so sure that they have thought out all the implications that
this has for IPv6.

> Also, that soldier is breaking the laws of the government of 
> the people
> he is killing, and if he is caught and put into a POW camp by
> that government, they can torture him without breaking their
> laws.

Not if they signed the Geneva convention on war. This is an
international
treaty which, in effect, creates international laws. These laws have
been used to prosecute people after WW II in Nurnberg and more recently
in the International Court of Justice in the Hague. When a country signs
an international treaty and then ratifies it in their
parliament/congress,
this treaty becomes part of their law. This is the basic principle
underlying
the European Union where the group of countries signed more and more
treaties
which then intruded more and more into their local laws. The NAFTA
treaties 
are similar, although they are not as extensive as the EU agreements.

--Michael Dillon