Re: EU Official: IP Is Personal

[Matt Palmer <mpalmer () hezmatt org>]

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 10:49:48AM +0200, Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> On Fri, 25 Jan 2008, Valdis.Kletnieks () vt edu wrote:
> > On Thu, 24 Jan 2008 22:33:20 PST, Owen DeLong said:
> > > > And oddly enough, license plates on cars act *exactly the same way* - but
> > > > nobody seems at all surprised when police can work backwards from a plate
> > > > and come up with a suspect (who, admittedly, may not have been
> > > > involved if
> > > > the car was borrowed/stolen/etc).
> > > In order to be using the license plate, you had to be physically
> > > present in the car.
> >
> > "It wasn't me at the hit-and-run, my car was stolen last night"
> >
> > "It wasn't me, my PC got zombied"
> >
> > Like I said, they work *exactly the same way*.
> >
> > But I'm giving up.  We've got people here who work for companies that have
> > business models that boil down to "given an IP address, figure out who to
> > bill" - but although it identifies a person well enough to send them an
> > invoice, they think it isn't enough to identify them.
>
> I wouldn't be suprised if in a few years some EU/US law mandates IP number 
> portability, just like people have with their cellphones.  Imagine what 
> that will do to the routing tables.  How many /32s can we get into the 
> RIBs these days?  :-)

That'd be a fun law to try and enforce, especially against the people who
refuse to accept such long routes (which is, after all, the only thing
that's stopping such long announcements from appearing already).  Tunnels
all over the place seems like the only way it'd even be halfway practical. 
It's more-or-less how phone number portability works anyway, from what
(little) I know.

- Matt