Authority does not come from cooperation. Authority comes from the ability to compel compliance regardless of consent. This distinction matters, because confusing the two is how coordination systems collapse into illegitimate power structures.

States have authority because they can enforce rules through law, courts, and force. If you refuse, there are unavoidable consequences. Cooperation-based systems are different. They function only because participants choose to cooperate. Once participation is voluntary and exit is possible, authority does not exist. What remains is convenience-based influence, not power.

Regional Internet Registries (RIRs) fall squarely into this second category. They were created as technical coordination mechanisms to prevent duplication and conflict in number resource distribution. They were not created as governments, regulators, or sovereign entities. No state delegated sovereign power to them. No treaty grants them jurisdiction. No law empowers them to decide what is legal or illegal.

RIRs exist because networks voluntarily cooperate. Networks join because coordination is useful, not because compliance is mandatory. This single fact eliminates the possibility of authority. The ability to leave, restructure, transfer assets, or route around the system is proof that participation is optional. Authority survives resistance; coordination does not.

RIR “policies” are therefore not laws. They are internal agreements among willing participants. An RIR cannot fine you, imprison you, seize unrelated property, or enforce compliance beyond its own administrative systems. The strongest action it can take is refusal to continue providing coordination services. That is not authority; it is withdrawal of cooperation.

Influence should not be mistaken for authority. RIRs have influence because coordination reduces friction. Networks comply because it is often easier, cheaper, and more predictable. But influence exists only while cooperation remains beneficial. The moment compliance becomes harmful or arbitrary, the influence evaporates.

A critical error occurs when registration is confused with ownership. RIRs register number resources; they do not own them. Registration is record-keeping. Control and economic value come from actual routing, network operation, and usage. A registry claiming authority over registered assets is confusing documentation with sovereignty.

The situation becomes destructive when a small, self-selected group of technical participants begins calling itself “the community” and treating its internal consensus as sovereign power. A few dozen people on mailing lists or in meetings do not represent the global Internet, the full set of resource holders, or states. They have no democratic mandate, no universal representation, and no accountability.

Voluntary participation cannot produce sovereign power. A group cannot vote itself into authority over others who never consented to be governed. Consensus among attendees creates agreements among those present, nothing more. Treating such outcomes as binding on non-participants is a category error: coordination is being misrepresented as governance.

This is where systems break. When a small insider group assumes it speaks for everyone, authority becomes self-declared. Neutral coordination turns into rule-making. Technical administration turns into political control. Trust collapses because participants realize decisions are no longer objective or predictable, but discretionary and ideological.

Exclusion accelerates the failure. Those with time, proximity, language access, or institutional alignment dominate policy-making, while others are effectively locked out. The system stops serving the Internet as a whole and starts serving a narrow class of insiders. This is domination, not coordination.

The most dangerous moment is when voluntary policy is enforced as if exit were illegitimate. At that point, the system imitates government without law, checks, or responsibility. Power exists, but accountability does not. This is worse than formal authority, because it lacks even the constraints that states operate under.

Technical systems survive on neutrality. Internet coordination works because it is boring, predictable, and non-judgmental. When moral, political, or ideological judgments are injected and policy is treated as sovereign law, participants route around the system. Fragmentation follows.

Legitimacy cannot be self-declared. Authority must be granted by those who are governed. Long-term compliance does not retroactively create sovereignty. Repetition does not transform convenience into mandate. Authority must exist at creation through delegation, not emerge later through habit.

RIRs were never meant to rule. They were meant to coordinate. When coordination bodies claim authority, they destroy the very conditions that made cooperation possible. The implicit social contract was simple: “we coordinate; you choose to cooperate.” Turning that into “we decide; you must comply” breaks the system.

The conclusion is straightforward. Authority requires coercion, mandate, and enforcement beyond consent. RIRs rely entirely on voluntary cooperation, allow exit, lack sovereign delegation, and possess no independent enforcement power. When a small voluntary group treats itself as a sovereign community, the system becomes unstable and illegitimate.

This does not strengthen the Internet. It destroys the coordination model that made it work.