[arin-ppml] The AC has a job to do with 2009-1 can you please help?

[Milton L Mueller]

Jeremy:
Like a few others, you are dead set against any market transfer policy, right? (A yes or no will suffice -- and please, no need for the smileys)

Your principled opposition to the involvement of monetary exchanges in address allocations is clear. Why pretend, then, that this debate is about a sunset date? 

> That's exactly why I favor a short-term limit to try out this
> radically new (for ARIN) policy that Milton Friedman would have
> loved.  Eliminate the uncertainty; it's just for a year, folks.
> Then as that time gets closer, we'll have experience on which to
> base a decision about renewing it, or not.

Such a short date would magnify the incentive to speculate and hoard. If you don't know whether the opportunity is even going to exist a year down the road, you'd better act quickly and with the shortest-term approach and hoard while you can. 

> >(Contrary to Griffith's completely unfounded and legally
> >uninformed speculations, transfer recipients who sign an
> >RSA will have no basis for a lawsuit claiming takings.)
> 
> No, they won't.  But the guy who bought Failing Electronics,
> Inc., to get its resources for resale sure will.  Ask *your*
> legal department.  ;-)

By your logic this guy will also sue ARIN when the sunset date expires, won't he? 

And even if he and others don't sue or lose, won't they go to the black/gray market when a poorly timed sunset pulls the rug out from under him? 

I have to conclude that those who propose a sunset date, especially short ones, are simply people who would like to sabotage a transfer policy that they hate but can't stop. 

> No, it doesn't.  All is does is qualify recipients who want to
> use the space.  It does nothing to prevent others from acquiring
> inventory to sell to those people by purchasing shaky companies
> that happen to have some.  There are lots of those now, and a
> canny investor can buy them cheap, thereby becoming the "owner"
> of their RTU, then sell off the resource at a handsome profit.
> Please don't tell me this possibility has not occurred to you.  ;-)

Your position is that IPv4 address space is so valuable that a transfer market will trigger a M&A wave as speculators will spend unlimited sums on failing companies, or companies of any sort, to get tradable blocks. 

But wait: you don't need a transfer market for this to happen, do you? You can already acquire blocks via acquisitions now. 

So if I understand your position, it is that it is ok for incumbent ISPs to hoard IPv4 address space via acquisitions, but not OK for "speculators" to acquire addresses in the same way and transfer them (at a profit) to people who really need them. Well, it wouldn't be the first time that anti-liberals starved people in order to save them from the depredations of the market.