[arin-ppml] the Transfer Policy Argument Space

[Owen DeLong]

On Sep 3, 2008, at 5:14 PM, John Curran wrote:

> On Sep 3, 2008, at 6:35 PM, Owen DeLong wrote:
>> I, for one, would very much love to hear a direct answer to 4e and
>> the subsequent opposing question from Steve Ryan.  My impression
>> so far is that they are approximately equal, but, I do not feel like
>> I have received any clear indication from Steve on this.
>>
>> OTOH, I suspect that it may be very hard for Steve to do so as these
>> could be very uncertain.
>
> Owen -
>
>  I'm not Steve Ryan (and he's thankful of that :-), but let
>  me pose a thought exercise which may provide some insight
>  into question 4e and its converse...
>
True.  Worse yet, to the best of my knowledge, you, like me,
do not have a JD and so we're both somewhat underqualified
to answer the question at hand which is why I put Steve
on the spot.

>  At a point in time when ARIN has effectively no remaining
>  available space to satisfy requests under the current IPv4
>  policy space, how should ARIN best fulfill its incorporation
>  duties to "to enhance the growth of the Internet .. by
>  encouraging the exploration and implementation of solutions
>  to Internet Protocol number scarcity issues"?  For instance,
>  how would two parties seeking to transfer IPv4 address space
>  (e.g. an address holder who could free up significant address
>  space through consolidation efforts, and an ISP constrained by
>  their inability to obtain additional IPv4 number resources)
>  view ARIN's fulfillment of its duties if there is neither a
>  more relaxed transfer policy nor a clear community statement
>  of why such a policy is undesirable?
>
1.	I'm all for a clear community statement of why such a policy
	is undesirable. I would argue that if a relaxed transfer policy
	fails to achieve consensus, then, that's a clear statement
	from the community THAT such a thing is undesirable, all
	that is left is to fill in the why.  There have been a number of
	reasons posted to this list, many of which are quite legitimate.
	I'm not necessarily hard opposed to a transfer policy, but, the
	more we delve into the attempts to compensate for the downsides
	to such a thing, the more convinced I have become that it is
	a quagmire and a slippery slope leading to the quagmire.

2.	I think ARIN could best fulfill its role through good stewardship
	and an outreach program which provided encouragement
	and viable incentives/assistance/etc. to get people with excess
	IP available to return it to the free pool for ARIN to properly
	exercise stewardship in recycling it rather than to allow
	an ad-hoc transfer environment that assures money becomes
	the sole mechanism by which we regulate who gets IPv4 address
	space in the future.


Owen