Re: Johnson, Farber, Maher and Cochetti

[Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu]

On Fri, 22 May 1998 01:03:17 BST, Jeff Williams said:
> 1.) Microsoft, which you use as a example, is already under scrutiny, as you
> should
>      already know.  The antitrust laws in place would certainly not allow for
> this
>      to happen even if it was another company besides Microsoft, such as AOL.

Oh? Is there currently a policy at the .COM registry that requires them
to report all sales of over 10,000 domains, similar to the reporting
requirements for cash transactions?

Go back and look at what *YEAR* the Microsoft investigation started.
Then tell me that they couldn't buy themselves a majority, force a vote,
win it, and enjoy the fruits - remember that even if they get their
wrists slapped 13 years later, that's 13 years of income...
 
> 2.)  There are far to many ISP's and IAP's, large, small and medium in size to
>       allow for this to happen.

Actually, this makes it *easier*.  Due to the fact that many proxy
votes are distributed essentially randomly, there's a rule of thumb
that states that you only need about 7-8 percent of the outstanding
stock in a widely traded company to effectively control it - a far
cry from the 51% guaranteed win, but a lot cheaper if you're willing
to settle for 95%...
 
> 3.) With .NET still available and not mentioned in you example a huge portion
>       of the existing Name Space will remain basically untouched.

What a WONDERFUL idea?  I could probably hijack both the .NET and
.ORG domains in a 'one domain one vote' world for a LOT less investment.
Or maybe I could get a package deal on .COM/.NET/.ORG all at once....

> 4.) The now supposed shortage of IPv4 address space would also cause
>      a huge problem to this scenario that you propose to allow for such an
>      action to occur.

Umm, the rquirement is that you have 2 nameservers for the domain.
And the root nameservers *already* prove you can fit 1M domains on
one DNS server.  Remember, we're not trying to create usable domains,
we're trying to create a LOT of domains so we get a LOT of policy votes.

Shortage of IP addresses? Hell, I've probably got more addresses in use
here in my basement than it would take to seize policy control in
a "one domain one vote" world.....

>> What the Hunt brothers did to the silver market should be a warning lesson.
>  It was and is.  They failed!  They lost nearly $1b

Yes.  However, (a) they came VERY close to suceeding, and (b) there
was a lot of collateral damage.  And remember that Bill Gates can
lose $1B on very minor stock price fluctuations - he lost about $1.8B
earlier this week, so dropping $150M on a project like this would be
pretty minor.

So.. would you rather live in a world where BIG-ISP.NET has cornered the
DNS and sets the policies because it owns the votes, or in a world
where BIG-ISP.NET comes up just a tad short because ANOTHER.ISP.NET
thought of the same idea, and the registrars have to dig out from
under 3 million domain applications?

				Valdis Kletnieks
				Computer Systems Senior Engineer
				Virginia Tech