[arin-ppml] On whether morality can be the lone argument against a transfer market (was Re: 2008-6: Emergency Transfer Policy for IPv4 Addresses)

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

>By encouraging people NOT to update 
> the records through a black market, the database accuracy can 
> and will degrade over time.

If there is an address "owner" who is active enough to sell
IP addresses on the black market in such a way that the "buyer"
can successfully use them on the Internet, then there is a chain
that law enforcement can follow to find the bad guys. Not to
mention the fact, that there is an entirely separate chain
produced by BGP announcements and ISP contracts which does
not depend on whois data at all.

In addition, ARIN has invalidated black market transfers, most
notably earlier this year, and will no doubt continue to do
so. Your argument is simply not valid.

> *	The ability to resolve legitimate disputes over address 
> space is degraded when it can be shown that ARIN's records do 
> not reflect reality. 

That didn't seem to matter when someone rejuvenated two corporate
names that had gone defunct many years ago, in order to sell
address blocks. 

> If two customers attempt to use the 
> same address space, service providers may or may not turn to 
> ARIN to understand who owns the block.  And if they do, 
> customers may be able to challenge ARIN to say that their 
> record keeping is inaccurate.

Anyone can challenge ARIN, but the fact is that it is not ARIN
who does the recordkeeping in the whois directory, but the 
organizations who have been allocated address blocks. If they
choose to shoot themselves in the foot, they themselves
are to blame, not ARIN.

> *	Over the longer term, it should be possible to more 
> tightly bind the routing system to the records found in the 
> ARIN database.

That would be nice, and would in itself, make black market
transfers much harder.

>  What I am saying is that we need to 
> balance the moral argument you are asserting against other 
> legitimate social needs. 

It seems to me that legitimate social needs are better served
by deploying IPv6 instead of spending increasing amounts of money
on band-aid solutions to keep the IPv4 Internet functioning. We
know that things cannot go on as they are. We can choose to waste
money avoiding the inevitable or "you can rock out to it" and invest
your money in IPv6.

All the work that would go into creating a transfer market for IPv4
addresses, and the fees paid for those addresses, is all wasted money
because in the end, IPv6 will be the core Internet protocol.

--Michael Dillon