600 acres and a mule, was Lightly used IP addresses

Sat Aug 14 08:11:58 UTC 2010

On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 12:00 AM, John Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
>> And in complete fairness - why should folks who received vast tracts
>> of addresses for little or no cost under a justified-need regime now
>> have free reign to monetize their sale?
>
> All of the real estate in my part of New York traces back to Military
> Tract so and so.  In the 1790s the state allocated two million acres
> on a justified-need basis, with the rule being that if you were a
> Revolutionary War veteran, that justified you getting 600 acres, free.
> You had to provide your own mule.
>
> Once the lots were all handed out, in subsequent transfers, nobody
> justified anything.

John,

Convincingly said here on an ISP mailing list. But what about the
folks who were denied address assignments by ARIN policies over the
last 15 years? Denied them based on the fiction that ISPs didn't own
IP addresses, that they were merely holding the addresses in trust for
the public they serve. With the IPv4 free pool almost totally
allocated, what's our residual responsibility to the folks that we
(and by we I mean you) deliberately prevented from getting addresses
while forking over /9's to Verizon?

It might have been wiser to handle IPv4 addresses in a property-like
regime. It might yet be smarter to handle IPv6 addresses that way. But
we didn't handle IPv4 addresses that way and now that the free pool is
nearly empty there would be significant fairness issues with any plan
to allow current registrants to treat their IPv4 address holdings as
if they were fee simple real estate. Like those 600 acres and the
mule.

> If you want to sell and I want to buy, that's
> that and the county records it for a nominal clerical fee.
> You will doubtless find similar histories all over the country.

Taxes. Nearly everywhere real estate is owned. A non-trivial
percentage of the land's sale value in real estate taxes year after
year after year. Makes it tough to horde or under-utilize land. When
paired with other progressive tax regimes that discourage leasing in
favor of leveraged purchases, tends to balance early ownership
inequities over time. Even Hawaii's ownership by the Doles, Baldwins
and Robinsons is slowly falling to the relentless hammering of taxes.

Ready to forge ahead with ownership, the rights of ownership and the
great privilege that is property taxes in the IPv4 addressing realm?
Be careful what you wish for.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
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