What to do with the money...

[Jim Fleming]

On Thursday, July 10, 1997 1:05 PM, Geoff Huston[SMTP:gih at telstra.net] wrote:
<snip>
@ 
@ So far so good.
@ 
@ But what the hell do you do with the money that's collected?
@ 
@ (and "Add to the NSF/NSI Internet Infrastructure Fund" is not considered
@   a valid answer!)
@ 

This is the Internet. To apply "old school" approaches to
this medium can be deadly and does not serve the community
here. As an example, many people are used to placing checks
into little white envelopes and sending them to a central "taxing"
body, where the checks are deposited and people are paid to
keep track of the money.

In some cases, such as the ISOC, people are also paid to
fly around to exotic vacation spots (with their spouses) and
they use the money to raise more money. This is all very
"old school" and the traditional way. (Of course, for people
who want to take an early retirement from the real world
and travel, it is a great deal.)

With the Internet it might be better to develop systems
where money does not need to be "collected" but only
VERIFIED. What better tool to use to verify the collection
then cross-referenced web sites complete with scanned
documents showing that one party paid another money
and the other accepted it.

In a situation like the IPv4 address space, there is a pressing
need to pass the "ownership" or stewardship of large pieces
of the space to private parties who can then help to manage the
space. In my opinion, there is a very simple way of doing
this AND many needy people, charities and universities
will benefit....

==== Proposal ====

I propose that the IPv4 address space be broken into
clean /16 blocks, not for routing, not for owership, but
for trusteeship.

I also propose that each /16 block require a "minimum"
annual DONATION of the equivalent of one U.S. cent
for each IP address. This is $655.36 per year.

I further propose that the delegate (trustee) of each block
be required to provide VERIFICATION that at least the
minimum donation was made to some charity, school,
non-profit organization, etc. and that this verification be
proven via publicly available cross-references on the WWW
which clearly show hard copy (scanned) proof that the
donation was made. (Photos of presentations of the
checks would also be an added benefit)

The delegation of the /16 in the IN-ADDR.ARPA zone
would be made by one of 256 (or less) verification
organizations that would volunteer to track the 256
possible delegations in each of the /8 zones. TXT
records would be added to the zone files to refer
to the web sites where the donation verfication can
be found.

====================

As an example, there would be a verifcation organization
that would be delegated 192.IN-ADDR.ARPA. That
organization would delegate to the various trusteeships
in that zone. When a donation is verified for a /16
delegation (let's say 192.160.0.0) then the proper
name server entries would be made for 160.192.IN-ADDR.ARPA.

With this approach, no money needs to be sent to
a central organization that uses the money to send
people on vacations around the world. Instead, the
money can be directed by each trusteeship in a
distributed manner and directly to the people that
will benefit.

Yes, there is potential for corruption. Yes, people
can write checks and never send them. Yes, I am
sure we can all figure out one thousand ways that
people will cheat the system. Instead, it might be
more productive to work on ways to educate both
the donors and recipients so that an open system
is developed with peer review and general good will
guiding the process.

Thanks for your time...

--
Jim Fleming
Unir Corporation