Ehud wrote:
With no offense to Internic, IANA, Jon, or Jbb. If I have to pay the Internic (and I do) [1] and they can also support IP (and they do) [2] and come out $60M black (they do!) then they can damn well fund their [3] own damn program to assign the [4] goddamned addresses without billing me.
I added the [#] notations above so I could comment in detail. [1] you do not have to pay the InterNIC -- there's always .US, and once IAHC's proposal gets going, you will be able to select among other alternatives as well (and my expectation is that .COM et al will become a shared gTLD in 1998). [2] you're right that they support IP, but remember the golden rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules. Leaving InterNIC to support this means that they (InterNIC rather than Kim personally or any ISP) get to decide _how_ they support it. They don't presently have to do anything you agree with. [3] it's not their program, it was NSF's program most recently, and believe me when I tell you that you don't WANT it to be "InterNIC's program". Finally, [4] to assign is to assert some form of ownership. I'd much rather see the ISP's, with Kim continuing as coordinator reporting a board of ISP "regents", assign and therefore assert ownership of, the address pool.