[arin-ppml] Legacy Space authority

michael.dillon at bt.com michael.dillon at bt.com
Tue May 6 03:03:36 EDT 2008


> Your arguing that IP addressing is property, and property is 
> subject to future legal decisions of a court which will end 
> up proving that IP addressing is property.

No I'm not. It's pretty clear that IP addresses are not property
in the normal sense, i.e. you cannot buy and sell them freely. But
in another sense, they are the property of the RIRs collectively to
allocate as they see fit. This is the thing that could potentially
be disputed under international law, if the RIRs are seen as being
unfair in their allocation of this valuable property. The issue has
already come up in the WSIS meetings.

> The ICJ in The Hague is extremely unlikely to take up an IP 
> addressing case until WIPO has weighed in on it.  And I find 
> that very unlikely, if they were going to do that, they would 
> have done it when they extended copyright over Internet domain names.

ICJ and WIPO only scratch the surface of the international organizations
which might weigh in if they see a weakness in the system.

--Michael Dillon



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