[ppml] Incentive to legacy address holders

[John Curran]

At 3:45 AM +0800 7/7/07, Randy Bush wrote:
> > My only purpose in sending the extract from RFC 2050 was simply to
>> point out that the intent of the first IANA (Jon Postel) on this
>> topic is rather clear, even before the formation of ARIN...  one of
>> the three tenets of address space management is conservation, via the
>>  fair distribution according to operational needs and via the
>> prevention of stockpiling in order to maximize the lifetime of the IP
>>  address space.  One may not have signed an agreement with an RIR
>> which says such, but that doesn't mean it wasn't implicit in your
>> participation in the Internet.
>
>2050 was after most of what we call legacy was allocated.  it was well
>into the nsi years, and one year before arin.  most was allocated by the
>early '90s.

Randy, I agree, but note that RFC 2050's authorship includes most of
the folks who performed those allocations (and earlier ones), including
Jon.  The allocation paperwork trail certainly could have been better,
but it's hard to argue on the intent of RFC2050, which explicitly calls
forth the right of  the IANA to invalidate right to invalidate any IP
assignments once it is determined the the requirement for the address
space no longer exists.

If someone wants to claim that they received their assignment in the
early days and that it carries no social obligations whatsoever, they're
free to do so.  Jon's not here to argue, and we didn't see fit to make it
explicit in the forms, so it's an easy position to defend (at least from a
legal perspective).

/John