Hijack ?

[Larry Vaden]

At 12:02 PM 7/18/97 -0400, Valdis.Kletnieks at VT.EDU wrote:
>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.

Actually, I think it might have been federal judge Paul Brown, Internet
Texoma's landlord here in Sherman, TX who ruled that 286, 386 and 486
didn't belong to Intel.

>From the MIT Workshop on Internet Economics March 1995 came
<http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/works/SarkAssess.html>, which says, in part:

"In this context, the paper argues that a usage based, free market pricing
system needs to be combined with some form of regulatory oversight to
protect against anti-competitive actions by the firms controlling the
bottleneck facilities and to ensure non- discriminatory access to emerging
networks."

>From the MIT Workshop on Internet Economics March 1995, came
<http://www.press.umich.edu/jep/works/HallgModel.html>, which says, in part:

"No "one-size-fits-all" approach to allocation of goods of such
complexity makes sense. 

<snip>..</snip>

Since the decisions on the appropriate allocation mechanism for public
goods, or for private goods externalities are at the heart of the debate
over the commercialization of the Internet, it is extremely important to
note why there is a "best" option in each case: that of asymmetric pricing
for the public good; and for the latter, that of returning the
characteristics of the good to those of a public good. In each case we have
advanced the multiple reasons above. If the growth of the economy--and the
growth of the "Internet" business--is a desirable goal, then it is to
everyone's advantage to recognize that the appropriate allocation decisions
will avoid the negatives and achieve the positives we have identified. 

<snip> ... </snip>

We do not need to wait for, or rely on, government to do this for us. But
we do need to exercise some internal leadership. What institution(s) will
step up?"