[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-171 Section 8.4 Modifications: ASN and legacy resources

[Scott Doty]

On 06/09/2012 12:31 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> Not everyone is a psychopath with no interest in anyone but
>> themselves, Bill.
> [Milton L Mueller] Whoa. Foul.
>

A point of order, please:

I've just took the time to read an article that a discussion participant
wrote that ends with the following bit of business:

|[Milton L Mueller]
| Only someone determined to preserve ARIN’s monopoly would ever make the claims [Paul Vixie] makes.


Not only do we have a logical fallacy -- an ad hominem argument -- but a
hyperbolic statement that would seem to be projecting the very arrogance
referred to in the article he cites. I hope that is just an illusion.

Mr. Mueller: Mr. Vixie has just taken time out of his Saturday to
respond to your note -- and I suspect he would have been happy to have
responded to it
sooner, had he known it was there. He has very carefully left your
person out of the argument, and responded to the argument itself. To me,
that shows a remarkable charity and restraint.

Would it be possible for you to step back and look at the discussion
_itself_, objectively, leaving Paul's person out of it? Can you make
your case with the same charity?

And so there is no mistake: I'm not bringing this up to be some kind of
"mediator", but only to actually _remark_ on said remarkable charity and
restraint.

And, I guess, for the following:

I almost never post to this list, so I am going to give some personal
details. Not because I'd like them to be attacked, but because I'm
trusting folks on the list to consider my expertise when I say that I
think IP addresses are less of a "property" or "asset" than someone's
street address.

A street address tells you where the property is, it isn't the property
itself. It's not a perfect analogy, but it does help illustrate how we
can apply everyday thinking to something that is an assigned 32-bit
number. (When we run out of room on this planet, and we start building
extra stories onto buildings to house humans, get back to me about my
IP-address-as-street-address analogy...)

So, personally -- as an operator for over 18 years, as well as being a
voting member of the ACM for most of that -- I have to wonder, why could
you not have made the economic discussion in ACM Queue itself?

And finally -- if the discussion of IP-address-as-property is off-topic
for the list, I would very much appreciate if someone would point to a
venue where we can all go an hash that out. Because it is a)
fascinating, and b) might be a good topic to show the flaws with the
Austrian and Chicago and whatever schools of economics people want to
try to apply.

Thanks,

-Scott Doty <scott at sonic.net>
(doty at acm.org is my acm address)