-----Original Message----- From: Peter Deutsch <peterd at Bunyip.Com> <snip>

I fully endorse the need for consensus, but can't see how any government can agree to handing over any form of power to an "non-entity", a diffuse set of entities, or a self-policing group.

Did you miss the U.S. Government endorsement of ARIN ? What about the recent casual transfer of assets and rights from the old APNIC, based in the Seychelles and working out of borrowed offices in Japan to the new APNIC based in Australia ? Do you think that happened without a node from the U.S. Government ? RIPE may be the only group that is large enough and diverse enough to operate without much U.S. Government influence. In my opinion, that is a result of their open and distributed structure. It is very hard to find one person that claims to be the only person that speak for RIPE. Many people do and they have diverse views. RIPE also handles more than IP addresses. In my opinion that is good because it helps to broaden a group and make them more aware of the big picture. Jim Fleming Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com End-2-End: VPC(Java)---C+ at ---<IPv8>---C+ at ---(Java)VPC http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/domainname/130dftmail/unir.txt http://www.ddj.com/index/author/idx10133.htm -------- Logged at Mon Sep 14 11:10:26 MET DST 1998 ---------