[ppml] Listing services

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> One other type of real-world listing service (that might be a 
> better approximation of what we'd want for an IPv4 listing 
> service) would be the various Multiple Listing Services (MLS) 
> set up to list real estate. 

Those listing services sell real property. If IP addresses are
to considered as real property, then the owners of those addresses
can choose to sell them privately or through whatever listing
service that they wish. Interestingly, in Canada west of Ontario,
there is no such thing as a real-estate deed or title document.
The legal owner of a piece of property is the person who is
recorded in the land registry, and when real-estate is sold,
the key moment is when the lawyers exchange the money *AND*
change the listing in the official registry. If you want to
know who owns a piece of land, simply give the provincial
government agent ten bucks (probably more by now) for a copy
of the entry in the land registry. Liens against the property
and rights-of-way (electric power lines, gas lines) are all
recorded in the registry.

So, given that IPv6 now exists and has an ABUNDANT supply of
addresses, it may be reasonable to declare all IP addresses to
be property which can be bought and sold. IPv4 addresses might
be valued at 5 bucks apiece while IPv6 addresses are valued at
10,000 per penny.

> I agree that we have a lot to learn about listing services 
> before we set one up.

This is the main reason why I think that it is too late to
implement some kind of market with the prime, or only goal
of mitigating the impact of IPv4 runout. 

>  Of course, that doesn't detract 
> from the importance of doing it right, so I would expect that 
> ARIN would hire experts on the topic to make sure they take 
> advantage of the expertise of someone who has set up a 
> similar system before.

It is all too easy to either hire the wrong sort of experts, 
or to give them the wrong instructions because you don't fully
understand the implications of your plans. In fact if you 
don't already have expertise in an area, it's all too common
to hire conmen rather than true experts. My point here is that
we all need to bring ourselves up to a certain minimum level 
of competence in regards to "markets" in order to make reasonable
decisions about creating one. I believe the current proposal
was created with much too narrow a viewpoint.

--Michael Dillon