[ppml] In$entive$

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> The RIRs cannot, do not, and will not police it.  There is no police  
> function
> here, at least not at the RIR level or the address assignment/ 
> registration
> level.

I think that you are wrong. The RIRs do have a police function and they
do police the allocations and assignments that they issue. However,
there is always a cost-benefit issue to policing and in this case, the
RIRs only carry out policing activities that are low marginal cost,
mostly because they are incidental to other activities. For instance
when an allocee returns for more addresses, they do some level of
policing. The first time an applicant asks for addresses, they do some
policing.

People have a warped idea of policing from the movies. They think that
policing means shooting bank robbers, driving real fast and arresting
people. In fact, most policing involves hanging around, possibly
drinking coffee and eating donuts. That is called "maintaining a police
presence" and it is very effective at limiting crime. 

When you get outside the realm of actual criminal activities and into
the realm where ARIN's activities sit, the word policing refers more to
the "hanging around" kind of activities and keeping good records, and
openness (i.e. whois directory service).

> As such, I don't believe that IPv4 free-space exhaustion requires
> any substantive change in RIR policy or conduct.  I don't believe
> that RIRs should start trying to extract addresses from address
> holders by force.  I certainly don't believe that arbitrarily pricing
> address registrations in such a way to force smaller players
> out of the market in favor of larger ones is a good idea. Finally,
> I don't believe that an address market will succeed, nor do I
> believe that if such a thing were adopted that it would be a
> good thing for the stability of the internet.

I agree.

--Michael Dillon