Shutdown of lists on May 30th at 12:01 AM

Thu May 29 16:36:20 UTC 1997

At 08:51 AM 5/29/97 -0700, you wrote:
>At 8:08 AM -0700 5/29/97, Richard J. Sexton wrote:
>>At IETF San Jose, my nuderstanding is they thought Eugene should move
>>forward with .alt in recognition of the work he had done, and take it from
>>there.
>
>	I don't know what "they" you are referring to, but there has been
>no IETF statement or direction concerning this matter.  There certainly has
>been no direction to Eugene to do a .alt or any other activity.

You'd have to ask Eugene. He was there, I wasn't. He called me form ther
with this tidbit.

>	As noted, the term "pirate" is rather precisely correct since it
>refers to those who try to take over that which is not theirs.

Really ? Who does it "belong" to then ? How is it expanded upon?

You seem to vascilate between "It's a public resource" (in whcih case
can the public not add to it") and "IANA owns it" (in which case there
are problems).

>The DNS has
>been a well-running service on the Internet "seas" for many years.  It has
>an established administrative authority and structure.  That authority has
>requested change and the IAHC was the agent of that request.  The work by
>the "other folks" is quite simply an attempt to replace the established
>authority and structure with another one.

There was once a time when the entire Internet accepted IANA's authotiry.

However, since the day NSI began charigng for domain names and IANA did
nothing, the confidence in IANA has been eroded. "Taxation without
representation" comes to mind.

>	Given the importance of DNS operational stability, the recent
>demise of the latest pirate effort can only make one wonder at the idea of
>allowing them to be in the critical path of such a critical resource.
>
>>Along came IAHC and the shit hit the fan.
>
>	It hit the fan months earlier.  The IAHC was created to try to turn
>some of it into fertilizer and grow a workable path.

And failed, being rejected by:

        US GOV't
        NSI
        Major ISP's
        Author of the DNS itself

which is enough to render it useless.

Can we get past the petty politics and try to develop a best compromise workable
solution? Nobody has one yet, and 4 or 5 islands of DNS-dom is insane.

--
  "You can tell the Internet pioneers, because they're the ones with the
   bullet holes in their feet."  - BKR