[arin-ppml] simple question about money

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net]
On
> Behalf Of Brian Reid
> > fees are generally not considered to be
> > policy.
> 
> Curious, because as far as I am concerned, fees are the policy that
> matters the most. OK, so the policies are used to *set* the fees,
rather
> than *be* the fees. It would seem to me that policies leading to the
> setting of fees are about as central to the charter of a public policy
> forum as can be.
> 

Yes, any attempt to separate "resource policy" and "pricing policy" just
can't work. This is like saying that the price of oil is unrelated to
energy resources policy. I am sure we are all familiar with basic laws
of supply and demand. How things are priced affects how much is
consumed, incentives to conserve, what are viable substitutes, etc. 

There are many pricing structures that would cover the costs of the
registry. But how those costs are distributed across different classes
of address users can vary greatly, and each pricing structure would
create different kinds of incentives with respect to address
consumption, different kinds of barriers to entry, etc.

It seems to me that the two biggest policy issues facing RIRs today are
address transfers (in effect, the creation of a much-needed private
secondary market to move scarce v4 addresses from underutilized
allocations/assignments to those who need them more) and the costs or
fees associated with granting assignments or allocations.