Statements against new.net?

Simon Higgs simon at higgs.com
Sat Mar 17 03:26:49 UTC 2001


At 08:37 AM 3/16/01 -0500, you wrote:

>For the Internet to work, at least with currently accepted DNS standards,
>everyone has to use the same root servers. Otherwise things can rapidly
>degenerate into chaos. The whole point of law and due process is that
>a duly authorized somebody has to have the authority to insist that
>everyone use the same root servers.

That is a nice fantasy statement. Could you cite chapter and verse for this 
please? The exact references where this "authority" and "due process" 
actually exists? There are a large number of folk (including ICANN board 
members) who would like to see it and take part in the "due process".

The Internet was designed to work in a chaotic environment and route 
packets around points of failure. There is no-one who has authority to 
intervene along a packet's path to it's destination. In fact, it's a 
federal crime to intervene in that process (US vs. Kashpureff). Even legal 
wire taps do not interfere with the packet's route. So who has the right to 
intercept my DNS query and send it to a set of root servers I didn't specify?

The only real authority for any root system is the holder of the root 
password for the master server, and whomever that root password-holder is 
prepared to trust for authorative information. Each member of the Internet 
community may make up their own on which root to use. That is confirmed in 
RFC 2826.

So I ask you, again, where is this fictional authority that absolutely 
mandates your compliance to a non-voluntary root server? Because whoever it 
is, by your blind acceptance, also has absolute control of your rights to 
language and speech within the DNS, and you totally forfeit your First 
Amendment rights (in the US anyway) to that authority.


Best Regards,

Simon Higgs

--
It's a feature not a bug...





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