On Jun 12, 2008, at 9:13 PM, David Conrad wrote:
Jay,
On Jun 12, 2008, at 9:32 AM, Jay Daley wrote:
I do not support this proposal for the following reasons:
[much elided, not because I necessary agree or disagree, but simply because I wanted to get to this:]
Rival databases, based around IPv4 trading exchanges, will spring up.
Why do you believe this won't happen due the vacuum created by the lack of RIR involvement?
Thanks, -drc
Hi David, It sounds like you're leaning toward favoring systems for recognizing inter-party transfers that are "nice" (i.e., that conform to whatever policies the community is willing to abide) because you predict that the community is unwilling to abide policies that that some members don't like -- specifically the ones that forbid inter-party transfers... So, that's a familiar kind of argument for "decriminalization" in other contexts, although I've only heard it used by people who think that the law in question was *always* inherently wrong or silly (c.f., minority rights restrictions, some kinds of victimless crimes like drug use, consensual adult sexual behavior, etc.), or else now completely anachronistic because it has no common/everyday referent in the modern world (c.f., all of the above plus feeding your horse in front of the saloon, etc). The only question -- and the one that people seem to be unwilling to engage -- is whether this particular prohibition was always inherently silly or rather important in its own right, whether the infraction to be legalized was/is trivial or truly dangerous. ftp://ftp.ietf.org/ietf-online-proceedings/95apr/area.and.wg.reports/ops/cidrd/cidrd.rekhter.slides.ps Was Yakov always wrong? Has something changed to make him less wrong today? Even the sale/exchange of private property between two private parties is not always a victimless crime. I can think of a variety of cases of private goods in which sales restrictions apply because of specific associated licensing requirements (e.g., cars, guns, etc.) -- which are in place themselves because of the potential for misuse (i.e., crimes with victims) of the goods in question. In all of those other cases, however, the property rights are protected, and the licensing requirements enforced, by external authorities with the means and authority and abundant willingness to actually en-force. Thought experiment: how many people would bother to register their cars, or even to get driver's licenses at all, if the "highway patrol" and it's equivalent didn't exist -- had never existed -- and if cars were invisible, ephemeral, and could vanish at will? Expecting drivers to voluntarily subject themselves to such an egregious, vulnerability- creating violation of privacy would be unrealistic, wouldn't it? How much less likely would it be if speed limits and other road-related laws had just been rescinded because people don't obey them anyway? Many assertions have been made to the effect that privatization of address space is not the intent of these proposals, so I'll happily pass over that can of worms here. It's not relevant to the above analogy anyway. As you rightly note, nature abhors a vacuum. I just think that we should take in filling one not to create other, even bigger and more serious ones. TV, speaking for self alone