[arin-ppml] 2008-6: Emergency Transfer Policy for IPv4 Addresses

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> It is really quite simple.  
> 
> What is granted in a block assignment from a RIR  (or the 
> original DARPA
> address-coordinatior) is not 'ownership' of the addresses, 
> but just a "right to use" license for those integers in a 
> particular context.

Precisely!
The context is what is all-important. Read your RSA and the
ARIN policies to see what the context is and you will discover
that you do not, in fact, have a licence which you can buy
and sell. You must have technical justification for having those
IP addresses.

This whole issue is about how to deal with IPv4 addresses when
the demand for them is higher than the supply. The people in favor
of markets and eBay sales are essentially saying that we should
FAVOR the wealthiest ISPs. This is an auction model of allocation
in which the resources go to the highest bidder.

Complicating the whole situation is the fact that nobody really
needs IPv4 addresses any more. But since so few of the technical
people responsible for IP networks have experience with IPv6, they
fear it, and this fear drives people to delay the inevitable and 
to sweep problems under the carpet. How many of you know that there
are issues with IPv6 and load balancers? How many of you have taken
that issue to load balancer suppliers versus doing nothing?

> The *license* is, itself, "property", and  can bought and sold. 

If that were true then ARIN policy would be irrelevant.

> It is, arguably a 'derivative object', because it's existance 
> is derived from another thing.
> 
> It is not a "derivative instrument", because those things are 
> a 'contract to enter into a contract'.

Not according to Forbes Investopedia which has this to say:

In finance, a security whose price is dependent upon or derived from one
or more underlying assets. The derivative itself is merely a contract
between two or more parties. Its value is determined by fluctuations in
the underlying asset.

--Michael Dillon