600 acres and a mule, was Lightly used IP addresses

Sat Aug 14 17:21:03 UTC 2010

On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 12:22 PM, John R. Levine <johnl at iecc.com> wrote:
> I wouldn't for a moment claim that IPv4 space was a way that was uniformly
> fair or wise or close to ideal.  But I don't think you're going to have much
> luck imposing fairness and wisdom retroactively on people who've already got
> the space.

John.

As things stand, IP addresses you've gained control of in the past
decade and a half you gained under a contract in which you explicitly
agreed that they not only didn't belong to you but that your continued
control was subject to the general public's pleasure as expressed
through regularly revised ARIN public policy. You won't tear that up
like an Indian treaty without first overcoming a certain amount of
push back from that disenfranchised public.

If you want IPv4 addressing to enter a legal regime similar to real
estate, I suggest that among other things you figure out how the taxes
should work and write some guidance for the pols before they start
figuring it out for themselves. If you don't construct the public
policy from the bottom up, you can count on someone else building it
from the top down and no newly defined form of property with a
quantifiable value is likely to escape taxation. Bear in mind that as
with real property, tax regimes which encourage a concentration of
ownership by a few wealthy owners will tend to be viewed with
suspicion and disdain.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004