US CODE: Title 15, Chapter 1, Section 2.

[Stephen Satchell]

At 12:17 AM 1/31/97, Tim Bass wrote:
>USCODE Title 15: Chapter 1: Section 2:
>----------------------------------------------------------------------------
>ß 2. Monopolizing trade a felony; penalty


Well, let's punch a few holes in your argument.  First, the principles of
ARIN can be traced to standards set by the IETF, a standards body
recognized by the American National Standards Institute and which operate
under rules reviewed and approved by ANSI as required by ANSI's definition
of "standards provider."

In those standards (the RFCs mentioned in the recommended-reading list) it
is made clear that IP addresses are a resource requiring management in
order to permit the proper functioning of the Internet as an aggregate of a
number of independent organizations operating in a co-operative
environment.  Further, the allocation, deallocation, and maintenance of IP
addresses is considered to be an administrative matter, as opposed to a
matter requiring standardization.  An example of the latter is the list of
well-known socket addresses.

As a not-for-profit organization operating as an association of interested
individuals (including legal fictions such as corporations) in which
membership is available to all there can be no trust.  In order for a trust
to exist, there has to be a bar to membership.  (Now that brings up an
interesting question about our membership requirements with relation to
being considered a trust -- too high a fee or a requirement to "own" IP
addresses could be considered discriminatory.)

For examples of similar organizations operating in the United States, I
direct your attention to the Ethernet address registry, BELLCORE (North
American Numbering Plan), and of course the IETF itself.

---
Stephen Satchell, Satchell Evaluations
<http://www.accutek.com/~satchell> for contact and other info
Opinions stated here are my PERSONAL opinions.