[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-171 Section 8.4Modifications:ASNandlegacy resources

[Milton L Mueller]

Jo, glad to see you back away from the "psychotic" remark. 

As for confusion about what property is, it is well accepted among political economists that there can be property rights in intangible assets. A property right is defined in economics as the right to exclude, the right to use and the benefit from the use, and the right to trade or assign to others. 

So to shift slightly to another context, you think that telephone number portability plans, which facilitated competition by giving end users a property right in their number, allowing them to move them from carrier to carrier, was a bad thing? After all, a telephone number "allows you to receive [calls] and for others to find you" and thus conforms exactly to your definition of an address.

By the way, whether the community can take away property rights has nothing to do with whether the rights are property rights or whether it is a good thing to assign them in the first place. E.g., in certain countries tanks claiming the mandate from "the community" can arrive at your door and expropriate your land. Doesn't mean your land isn't property, doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. 

> -----Original Message-----
> I think that this conversation demonstrates some deep confusion over
> what property is.
> 
> Property: are those tangible assets that you own. You know, the hardware
> you use to provide the service on. You bought them.  This stuff is not
> unlike a house, or perhaps one could argue, a mobile home.
> 
> Address: is that thing you get from the community which allows you to
> receive mail, and for others to find you. And the community can vote to
> change it. And does, not often, but perhaps more often than many people
> expect.
> 
> I find it totally amusing that "allows you to receive mail, and for
> others to find you" amazingly sums up both the real uses of physical and
> IP address ;-)  But neither one is owned, and both can be changed or
> even taken away if the community votes to do so.
> 
> --
> Jo Rhett
> Net Consonance : net philanthropy to improve open source and internet
> projects.
> 
> 
> 
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