[ih] a single organization "managing the network"

[John Gilmore]

Jack Haverty wrote:
> What I was referencing was a non-technical design decision -- the notion
> that there shouldn't be any single person, corporation, or organization
> "managing the network".   The ARPANET, and IIRC all other networks of
> the day, were under a single organization's control.   The Internet
> tried a different approach, where "no one in charge" was the design
> principle.

The Internet Archive is facing the same dichotomy today.

It would be better if there were multiple replicated copies, owned and
filled and operated by different organizations in different parts of the
world.  If those orgs could cooperate to exchange updates, even more
better!

At the moment, there are several replicated copies of the IA corpus,
automatically updated, but they are all under the control of a single
organization, which can suffer any of the maladies of organizations.  If
that org totters or fails at some point before the data is replicated
outside its own control, then a large fraction of the history of our
culture will be at serious risk of loss.

It took a genius to create it.  It won't take a genius to distribute it.
Just a realization that the corpus is becoming too valuable to leave
inside a single point of failure.

	John