[arin-ppml] clarification of Board actions Feb 2 and Mar 18, 2009

[Kevin Kargel]

From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On
Behalf Of Milton L Mueller
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 8:41 AM
To: ppml at arin.net
Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] clarification of Board actions Feb 2 and Mar
18,2009

>>The fear argument goes something like this:

>>When IPv4 runs out some large cash-rich org will request a
>>block and be denied.  That org will then spend it's money
>>lobbying it's nation's government that the RIR's know that
>>there's lots of available IPv4 tied up in old assignments that
>>aren't being used, and that because ARIN has the bulk of it,
>>and ARIN hasn't done enough to scavenge out this stale addressing,
>>So far, so plausible. Your scenario goes comically awry at this point,
however:
>>that ARIN is no longer functioning, and that the U.N. needs
>>to assign a committee - like WIPO was done with the DNS
>>system - to interfere and take control of the assignment
>>mechanism away from ARIN.
>As someone who does a bit more than “follow” the global politics of
Internet governance, I can assure you that large, cash-rich organizations
(ISPs) in North America are >the last parties on earth who will want to call
in the United Nations. It is true that the ITU would like to get address
allocation/assignment back into an >intergovernmental system. It is also
true that the entire Internet industry and the USG are implacably opposed to
that. Outside of China and a few middle eastern countries >like Syria, you
would have a hard time telling me who does support that. 
>ARIN will cease to exist and chaos will ensue.  
>Really? Just like that? I shake with fear.
>It is NOT necessary to create a buying-and-selling market of
>IP numbers to obtain close to 100% use of routable IPv4.  It
>is merely necessary to prove that all assignable, routable IPv4
>is in use on the Internet.  Cleaning and grooming WHOIS is a
>major first step.
>What you seem to miss is that a transfer system, executed properly, is the
best way to clean and groom the Whois system because it harnesses the
private incentive to >benefit from trades. ARIN can either swim upstream or
swim downstream.  

A transfer system will inexorably raise the cost of doing business on the
internet.  However you paint it this is a bad thing for the community and
for society.  I will continue to oppose P2P transfer policies whenever they
are presented.

Something I have started to consider, which has it's own set of flaws, would
perhaps be an ARIN run publically accessible auction for returned IP space
which would pay the returnee an amount not greater than the registration
fees they had already given ARIN for that IP block, or in the case of legacy
space an amount equal to some reasonable multiple of registration fees for
the block (10?).  An alternative to an auction would be a lottery with the
winner of the lottery to pay to ARIN the publically stated amount used to
reimburse the returnee their registration fees plus ARIN handling charges.
This would be fair to the public, would not foment a runaway commodities
market, and would offer some small incentive to return IP netblocks.  The
lottery concept would avoid ARIN profit taking.  The accepting organization
would of course have to meet current ARIN criteria for any netblock they
received.  I have not thought this through enough to be even close to a
proposal.

Kevin



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