april fool jokes or real ? [governance] ICANN to shut down internet

[Stephane Bortzmeyer]

On Thu, Apr 03, 2008 at 10:43:26AM +0700,
 Rudi Rusdiah <rusdiah at rad.net.id> wrote 
 a message of 87 lines which said:

> so this shut down, was it a joke on april fools day ?

It was. Not only was it sent on April 1st (and I insisted on the day)
but anyone could see it was a joke, for the exact reasons you explain:

> 2 what does it mean by Internet shutdown... how can you shut down
> Internet ?... it is a network of network... is it just shutting down
> the backbones , name server (DNS) or what ?

Governance-speaking, it is clear for everyone on this list that no
organization (ICANN, Microsoft, IETF, ITU, whatever) has the power to
shutdown the entire Internet. As often with April's 1st jokes, it is
made for people to think about the news we receive daily. Are they
realistic? Are they true?

It was also an opportunity to learn new things, for instance that
April's fools day is not universal. 

On the other hand, I also had a confirmation that once you mention
ICANN in an email, Alejandro Pisanty steps in to defend Marina del Rey
:-)

Practical jokes' amateurs may appreciate these:

http://www.google.com.au/intl/en/gday/index.html (Google invented a
technology to search Web pages that do not exist yet)

http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5241.txt (IETF will now sells the
rights to protocol fields to raise money)


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