[dns-operations] renesys blog: Identity Theft Hits the Root Name Servers

[Paul Vixie]

> (I'm saying this based on reading the address for L root was Bill"'s" to
> begin with.  Maybe I'm misinformed on that.  And for whatever value of
> "ownership" Bill has to that address.)

we all have only as much control over the addresses allocated to us as the
operators of the rest of the routers on the internet think we have.  it's not
like ownership since the object is created by recognition and cooperation.

the fact that the internet's router operators are noncollective but still very
sheep-like, and we all tend to accept what routes we're given, and we all tend
to use RIR "whois" to resolve conflicts, means the system mostly works fine,
and bad actors (like ep.net was on may 2 2008) can get away with quite a bit
of misdoing before anyone figures out what to do about it.