Re: address portability

["Jim Fleming" <JimFleming@unety.net>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Karrenberg <Daniel.Karrenberg@ripe.net>
<snip>
>
>Also it is important to realise that number portability is *only* an
>issue because of the amount of engineering work associated with
>renumbering.  It is not an issue because the numbers are visible to the
>end-user and as such have recognition or other value, such as well known
>telephone numbers. I am starting to hear less-than-clueful know-it-all
>political types call for portable IP numbers 'because we have portable
>800 numbers'. That is scary!
>


Daniel,

I think that you are seeing and/or hearing the discussions because of
the double standards being endorsed by the I* MLM community. On one
hand they want to restrain trade in the registry industry by
controlling TLD registries and the domain name space and on the other
hand organizations inside the I* MLM pyramid are encouraged to charge
high fees for monopoly services related to IP address allocations.

One of the reasons often used to attempt to control the domain name
space is that people will be "locked-in" and subject to horrible
economic practices of the registries which have yet to do those
horrible things. It is only natural that people interested in domain
names would point out that the I* MLM pyramid locks people into the
horrible economic practices of the IP address allocation business
(which is really just the .ARPA TLD domain business).

The double standard is that people enjoying the economic benefits of
the I* MLM IP allocation pyramid do not acknowledge that they are
practicing what they tell others needs to be avoided or at least
feared. The irony of all of this is the I* community claims to be
protecting people from the horrible government bureaucracies of the
world, yet they have become a bureaucracy worse than the government
because they do not have the support of all citizens, just a small
number of netizens who are clearly happy when policies funnel the money
into their pockets, as they block the way for anyone else to develop
businesses that they do not pay "cyber-taxes" in some manner.

The hypocrisy is clear and people are reacting.


Jim Fleming
Unir Corporation - http://www.unir.com