[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Recovery Fund

[Tom Vest]

On Nov 24, 2008, at 1:13 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:

>  Sometimes (and here we stray a bit from pure economics and into  
> institutions) compulsory mediation plays a regulatory or standard- 
> setting function; e.g., professional certifications we associate  
> with everything from doctors to hairdressers. in that case you  
> create a bottleneck to impose uniform standards on the players. the
> whole point is to create a bottleneck and regulate entry; it has  
> little or nothing to do with matching buyers and sellers. don't  
> confuse these things.

An excellent observation, but one that raises some key questions:

Is "compulsory mediation" also a bottleneck when it's undertaken by  
commercial entities as opposed to when it's when undertaken by non- 
market actors?

Is the "regulation of entry" by incumbents purely for commercial  
benefit any less problematic than entry regulation to impose uniform  
standards, e.g., if the standards have been proposed, evaluated, and  
voluntarily adopted by the industry members themselves?

Because if IPv4 resource transfers are initiated while IPv4 remains an  
absolute bottleneck to "independent" [1] participation in the Internet  
service delivery market, then compulsory mediation of all future  
Internet service providers by "incumbent" [2] service providers will  
become a permanent feature of the Internet.

TV

[1] "Independent" means the way that all RIR member institutions do  
it / have done it to date, i.e., "provider independent" at least at  
the addressing level.

[2] "Incumbents": the universe of service providers that were direct  
beneficiaries of the RIR-based allocation mechanism.