Hans-Werner, I'm pleased to see you still tell it like it is. 
Hope all is well with you and your family. Eric
Well I am pleased to see this from Hans Werner too -- especiAlly the
lines of historical authority .....
he said:
formally I guess one would claim that the
Internet address space is the personal property of the IANA instrument
of the United States Department of Defense, if that is what you like.
I would prefer to think that the Internet evolved so much over the last
ten years or so into the public realm, that the address and naming
spaces have become public property. Instead of bitching about the
InterNIC, NSF, ARPA, IANA, whoever, you guys should thank them for how
far they got things driven, and whet they fostered and allowed to
transition to the international private sector. [end of Hans Werner quote]
Cook speaking:
Are we hearing then that **ARPA has given up any and all of its authority
over IANA**? That DOD no longer claims to own IP numbers? Hans Werner,
I'd prefer for you to be precisely correct in your assertion about the
public property nature of IANA, IP numbers etc. I'd love to thank Arpa
for giving freedom to IANA and DOD for doing the same to IP numbers. But
I have not seen any evidence that they have indeed done this. If they
have perhaps the relevant people at ARPA and DOD would come out and
confirm just exactly what they consider their current authority over IANA
and IP numbers to be?
I'm puzzled why anyone would think that, these days, IANA is under
US DoD authority. If IANA were under any US Goverment authority,
it would be NSF. But IANA is appointed by the IAB which is not
under US gov authority except to the extent that it has ties to
ISOC and ISOC is incorporated in the US.
Like most "authority" in the Internet, IANA controls the IP address
space because it is to everyone's advantage to cooperate. Anyone can
get up a machine and use any IP address they want, they will just have
a lot of trouble talking to anyone else if they don't coordinate with
IANA (or actually the registries to whom IANA has delegated almost all
the day to day coordination activities).
Donald
Donald says:
I'm puzzled why anyone would think that, these days, IANA is under
US DoD authority. If IANA were under any US Goverment authority,
it would be NSF.
Sorry to disagree with you Donald but i have been quite explicitly told
that if IANA is under the authority of anyone it is under the authority
of NOT DoD NOR NSF but rather the **Advanced Research Projects Agency**
(ARPA). Now if the director of ARPA steps forward, or any other ARPA
official comes forward and says no ARPA claims no authority over IANA
then we'll all be enlightened.
Opps........ I had not seen Mike St Johns note when I sent my first
reply to this or I would have refrained. Thanks Mike. My apologies for
adding to list traffic.