Hijack ?

[Valdis.Kletnieks at VT.EDU]

On Fri, 18 Jul 1997 08:55:56 CDT, Jim Fleming said:
> ARIN is currently three people from Network Solutions, Inc.
> This is a private company launching another private company
> to apparently "inherit" U.S. Government assets (IPv4 Addresses)
> to use to their financial advantage.

I would love to hear the legal argument in an international court of law
stating that the US Government *owns* integers.

Remember - it's *NOT* about ownership.  It's about coordinating *registering*
who is *using* what integers to prevent collisions and similar problems.

You don't own your Social Security number - it is registered so nobody else
(hopefully) uses it.

You don't own your credit card numbers - but somebody keeps track of which
ones you use and which ones are somebody else-s.

You don't own the license plate number on your car - but somebody runs a 
registry to make sure that *you* have *your* number and not somebody else's.

Some of these registries (some of which are even governmental) charge you
for this service (credit cards, license plates), others are paid for out
of your tax dollars for the "common good" (social security numbers).

IP allocation has been in this last category  (free governmental) for so
long that the attempt to move it to some other category (registry by a 
for-pay private organization) that the resulting mental stress is causing
some of us to lose track of what is *really* going on.
-- 
				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech


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