On Thu, 10 Apr 1997, Karl Denninger wrote:
The rest of the organizations that have announced an intent to sign at a formal
The IAHC has said they *SIGNED* the documents.
Intent and action are two different things Perry.
Grow up Karl! Hank Nussbacher said as follows:
Of the over 25 signatories (so far), MCI is just one. UUnet, Digital, France Telecom, EFF, are others that come to mind.
Hank is only one member of the IAHC and does not issue official statements.
But he lied. The EFF has said they *HAVE NOT* signed.
There you go again. One guy from the EFF says something and you claim that this is equivalent to an official statement of the EFF.
In fact, according to the other people involved, *NONE* of those so-called signatories are in fact signatories at this point in time.
So what. That's not a good enough reason to call him a liar. I'm sure there are dozens of statements that you have made on various mailing lists that are provably incorrect. Does that make you a liar? Sheesh...
He's also human and can make mistakes. Maybe since English is not the only language he uses in his daily work, he missed some of the subtlety inherent in the word "signatory".
There is no subtlety in the word "signatory".
Maybe not for you. But for someone who spends everyday working in another language like Hank does, I generally cut them some slack on language subtleties irregardless of their native language. I am a native speaker of English and didn't learn another language until I was ten but I have still caught myself making mistakes in English that I can track down to quirks of the other languages that I speak.
rubric he darn well pleases to use. In particular, it is well known that Jon Postel is the official voice of IANA and is the one who makes official statements for IANA. This MoU looks a lot like an official statement to me.
The IANA *DOES NOT EXIST* as an organization.
So what. If I want to go and open a Bank account in the name of the International Institute for Internet Investors then I don't need anything other than my own signature on a piece of paper. Since the name does not have Corp., Inc., Ltd., Society, or Association in it, it is clear that it has no legal existence but I can still open a bank account, write checks, buy letterhead, register a domain, etc. If I manage to create a reputation for the activities of the IIII (IV for short :-) then people will accept my signature beside the name of the IIII for based on that reputation. That's what Jon's signature means on the MoU when it is beside the name of IANA. Nothing more, nothing less. People are free to disagree and refrain from signing the memorandum. And they are free to publicly state their agreement by adding their signature to the document. It's not a contract or a treaty, but a public statement by those who sign it. It does not prevent anyone who does NOT sign it from doing whatever they wish, up to and including the creation of an alternative root domain for the DNS. Your creation of the eDNS is evidence enough that this is so. While there are many of us that will lobby hard to get people to support IAHC and to NOT support eDNS, I haven't heard anyone call for you to be shut down or to stop eDNS from operating or from moving forward with their plans. It's a free world. You do your thing, the IAHC will do theirs, and the users of the Internet, singly and en masse, will choose the winner or winners. Note that this is *NOT* a zero-sum game even if the DNS technology seems to imply zero-sum on the surface. Michael Dillon - Internet & ISP Consulting Memra Software Inc. - Fax: +1-250-546-3049 http://www.memra.com - E-mail: michael@memra.com