[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Recovery Fund

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Sun, Nov 23, 2008 at 11:30:50AM -0600, Stephen Sprunk wrote:
> If ARIN were to operate a listing service, wouldn't that become a 
> non-issue?  You can see what the asking (or bidding) prices are, how 
> they change over time, and when sales take place.  Even if the final 
> price isn't reported, if there are more than a handful of participants 
> you can guess what the price was based on other information.  The 
> natural greed of both buyers and sellers will keep the highest bid and 
> lowest offer fairly close together, and any arms-length transactions 
> will occur somewhere in that spread.

I liked the listing service idea, and think it would have a chance
of being successful on the points you mention.  However, the listing
service was optional, as proposed.  This still allows for many
interesting transactions to take place in secret.  It's very had to me
to guess what effect this would have on the market.

> ARIN _can_ enforce regulations, in a way, by refusing to process a 
> transfer request that does not comply with policy.  Of course, 
> regulations don't apply to the black market, so if ARIN wants to have 
> _any_ say in the market that _will_ develop, we need to get as high a 
> percentage of transactions into the white market as possible.

Agreed.  That's part of why I like this proposal.  If you're a new
entrant today and ask "where do I get IP's" the answer is "ARIN".
Under this proposal the answer continues to be "ARIN".  The chance
of those unfamiliar with the process finding the white market is
hih.

Take 2008-6 as an example though, the "white market" may be cragislist,
and e-bay, and some brokerage firm.  And when buying how does someone
know they bought a "clean" "white market" IP?

> >If you agree with the scheme so far, there's only one problem left
> >and it is the problem you've zeroed in on.  Pricing.  What scheme
> >do we use to set the price?  In terms of transparency and predictability
> >I think having the transactions known is good; but quite frankly
> >E-Bay could do that just as well.  It's not a feature ARIN is
> >necessarily uniquely qualified for; however by centralizing it I
> >think there is some good of having a single place to look.
> >  
> 
> Any attempt to fix a particular price will fail, as demonstrated in 
> command economies all over the world.  Either it's too low and you can't 
> meet demand, or it's too high and the market is flooded with excess 
> supply.  So, if we want anything approaching efficiency, we're left with 
> a floating price that will be less predictable but properly match up 
> supply and demand.

I agree 100%.  We cannot fix the price, and I hope you did not get
the impression I wanted to do that.  The price must float with
supply and demand.  I think this proposal offers transparency and
short term dampening; but ultimately supply and demand will determine
the price.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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