Re: ISPs as stakeholders

[Jim Dixon <jdd@matthew.uk1.vbc.net>]

On Tue, 2 Dec 1997, Kent Crispin wrote:

> > > actions of a single registrar?  What happens to the stability of the 
> > > net if some court in Virginia is persuaded that CORE should be 
> > > prevented from distributing whois information, or zone updates?
> > 
> > Believe it or not, the Net will continue functioning whether or not
> > people can register names in .firm and .store - or is it .shop?
> 
> In a narrow sense "The Net" will also function perfectly well with no
> DNS at all.  However, the registration of new names *is* an important
> component of the net, especially of doing business on the net, and if
> it were terminated for any significant length of time real damage
> would be occur. 

Very few will miss your avoiding the question entirely.

If a court in Virginia were to shut down CORE, the other 200+ registries
in the world would continue to run.  

The Internet is extremely resilient to failures of all types because
critical resources are replicated and distributed.  What you are 
advocating is that the DNS should be made to depend upon one resource,
and then to compensate for this design error we should hide it behind
Swiss laws.
 
> > On the other hand, I personally do not understand why anyone would do 
> > business with a company that operates behind such elaborate legal 
> > barriers.
> 
> You must live in a cave somewhere, then.

This must be wit.  

It isn't common sense.
 
> Furthermore, end-users do business with a registrar, not
> CORE.  They can sue the registrar.

The registrars do not control the database.
 
> Finally, if the end-users don't like the legal environment surrounding
> CORE they can vote with their feet.  If nobody registers names in the
> CORE database it will go out of business. 

How exactly does this square with the statement from Bob Shaw earlier
today that CORE is to have control of all gTLDs?  It is quite obvious 
that the intention is that there should be no alternative, so that 
people can't vote with their feet.

--
Jim Dixon                                                 Managing Director
VBCnet GB Ltd                http://www.vbc.net        tel +44 117 929 1316
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of Council                                                 President
Internet Services Providers Association                       EuroISPA EEIG
http://www.ispa.org.uk                              http://www.euroispa.org
tel +44 171 976 0679                                     tel +32 2 503 2265