All property, Karl, is the result of common law. Some, like land or your chair, have been with us for millenia, so we no longer recognise that the notion of property itself is an invention -- but naturally it is. The reason your chair is yours is because of longstanding convention, and not because the rules of physics require it.
David Conrad was merely pointing out, rationally, that what gives APNIC, ARIN, and the IANA itself power is not a law saying "Joe owns IP addresses" but the fact that providers voluntarily route based on those number allocations and recognise them. The "property" like feature of the numbers does not derive from the integers themselves but because of the fact that people will route them. Given this, the value is not granted by the government, which does not even have laws on the allocation of integers, but by the consent of the entire community.
Due to the great success of the Internet, the traditional methods of managing Internet resources are evolving. Some of the questions being addressed in the Green Paper are 1) who is in charge, and 2) what legal jurisdiction(s) should apply. One difficulty in establishing the latter is that legal jurisdictions are directly related to cultural values. I am encouraged by recent information that suggests that the White Paper will embrace the following . . . At 12:25 PM 4/21/98 -0400, Jay Fenello wrote:
In our emerging cyber-world, competition between ideas and cultural values must also be encouraged, as it is likely to lead to a new understanding of our connectedness. Everything we do should encourage this competition.
Consequently, I suggest that the proper course of action is to support a global Internet that gives U.S. Values the opportunity to compete on an equal footing with other soveriegn and cultural values.
I would like to suggest that, rather than arguing about how things used to be, we start working together to establish how things *ought* to be. For this to happen, the old guard must realize that their success has expanded their historical management roles to include policy issues that have traditionally been in the governmental arena, issues like privacy, free speech, etc. By looking forward, both sides of this debate can work together for the greater common good. Regards, Jay Fenello President, Iperdome, Inc. 404-250-3242 http://www.iperdome.com