Declan McCullagh forwarded the message by...
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com> -- who wrote:
The NETCenter
What an oxy-maroon. What a self-referent -- not to mention self-congratulary -- canard. [...]
Any entity which has the unmitigated presumption to have "center" and "net" in its name demonstrates nothing less than total ignorance [...]
Reality is not optional. Trying to find the "center" of any piece of the net is equivalent to the cosmological "problem" of finding the "center" of the universe.
It represents the utter fallacy of hierarchy in a geodesic age.
I take your point insofar as "NETCenter" and crypto, but you repeat a common misperception. Although the Net is tough to control, and it is a distributed system of networks, there are -- of course -- a number of centralized process. The Domain Name System is completely hierarchical. Moreover, Jon Postel of IANA represents the Net's central authority due to: 1. the IP number allocations, 2. the DNS "root", and 3. the technical standards, such as port numbers, etc. Unless there was a certain degree of centralized control, in an engineering perspective, the Net "Would Not Work." That's the fact, Jack -- n'est-ce pas? Yes, it is *possible* to do away with these centralized functions, and this is happening now, in a very non-public way. -- KNC