At 02:11 PM 3/31/99 -0800, you wrote:
The songbird sings a sweet tune. Much of the cordial blather being exchanged
between me and a few others disappears when it is made clear, as I believe
Roeland ultimately has done, and as the songbird now sings, that all the
hassle has been over interconnections that don't affect the Internet anyway.
So who gives a rip? Not the USG, not the songbird, and not me.
Now, back to things that matter . . . .
Bill Lovell
>On Wed, Mar 31, 1999 at 12:22:38PM -0800, Greg Skinner wrote:
>> Kent Crispin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>>
>> > (*) The MoU failed because the competing interests refused to be
>> > balanced, and caused the USG to get involved. This remains true with
>> > ICANN -- ICANN will only succeed because the USG has sufficient power
>> > to force a resolution.
>>
>> Hmmm. What power does the USG have to prevent people from using
>> alternative TLDs?
>
>None whatsoever. What keeps people from using alternative TLDs
>is economics. The primary value of a domain name on the
>Internet is that it gives global visibility. Alt-TLDs are
>invisible, so there is no practical value to have a domain name
>in an alt-tld. Without alternative TLDs, there is no point in
>having an alternative root.
>
>The underlying force that has fueled the growth of THE Internet
>is the promise of universal connectivity, at the human level. A
>collateral feature/requirement of this universal connectivity is
>the single space of unique names.
>
>The desire for universal connectivity/visibility is what caused
>the merger of all the other networks (bitnet, etc) that existed
>in the early days of networking. The end result of this
>progression is a single connected network, with a single global
>addressing scheme, and a single global human-visable name space
>sitting on top of the addressing scheme.
>
>In addition to being an undeniable historical trend, this is
>almost a theorem -- there can only be one globally connected
>name space on the net -- if there were two or more, they
>wouldn't be globally connected...
>
>This principle guarantees that there will be one Root. The
>principle still allows for the possibility that a sufficiently
>strong force could invalidate the current Root, and fragment
>the net. The result would be a quick convergence to a new
>Root, almost certainly under government control.
>
>But I don't see any force on the horizon anywhere near strong
>enough to invalidate the current root. ISPs, and all the
>businesses that have come to use the net, need a stable root to
>prosper. That need completely overshadows the chicken-feed
>pissing and moaning about ICANN that we hear on these lists.
>
>It's interesting -- someone on one of these lists was talking
>about how the techies have to come to grips with the fact that
>the Internet is beyond their control. That is true, and that
>is precisely why the "alternative root" proposals (which are
>fundamentally a technical response to the situation) aren't
>going to come to anything. The techies can go on and form
>their alternative roots to their hearts content (and, as a
>confirmed techie, I would be happy to play along). But the
>real Internet, and the real Root, aren't going to be affected
>-- business and government will see to that.
>
>--
>Kent Crispin "Do good, and you'll be
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] lonesome." -- Mark Twain
