[ih] Some Questions over IPv4 Ownership

[John Curran]

On Oct 14, 2010, at 11:09 AM, John Klensin wrote:

> A different way of looking at all of this is that the entire
> addressing allocation/ delegation/ registration model ultimately rests
> on a combination of collective consent and an understanding that
> having non-unique addresses floating around causes problems in routing
> packets. 

Collective consent is very important, and one could argue more so than any 
particular legal theory or contract clause.  This is why ARIN administers 
the Whois database according to the community developed address policy; it 
is what the ISPs want and expect in keeping their networks running; it is 
what is necessary for ARIN to be true to the mission for which we were 
established.

At present, ARIN encourages parties to return unused address space, and has a
community-developed specified transfer policy which lets one party which has 
qualified for more space get it from second party (potentially by providing 
financial incentive for the second to renumber if necessary)  This encourages 
return of little used space into the system and higher overall utilization, 
while still providing stewardship per the guidelines in RFC2008 and RFC2050.
There are some folks out there who object to this approach on principle (i.e.
it's not a wide-open free market), but it is what the community adopted.

Some likely object because may prevent them from maximizing their IP address 
monetization game and pursuing the ip-addresses-are-property angle might 
give higher yields.  The actual community direction and possible operational 
impacts aren't even a consideration for that crowd; they simply have to argue
that property rights should apply to address assignments because it is good
business to do so.  This has been expected for years and will be handled in 
due course.

/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN