[arin-ppml] Borders sells their /16 block

[John Curran]

On Dec 7, 2011, at 5:12 PM, Benson Schliesser wrote:

> Your summary notwithstanding, the intent of my original comment seems clear. The bankruptcy court has recognized a bundle of rights in IPv4 addresses as an asset. Indeed, under Title 11 Section 363, the court implicitly recognized this as a form of property. It was recognized explicitly as property in the purchase agreement.

All correct. That such rights exist to a given block of IP addresses
and can be disposed as property of the estate does not preclude that 
the community also has certain rights to the same address block, nor 
does it mean that the address block itself is some form of freehold 
property.  

> I do recognize the nuance that your summary described, and see how my comment could be more accurate if worded differently. You'll please forgive me - did I mention that I'm not a lawyer? - for using casual language and shorthand in my message. I believe the correct text would have been "exclusive rights of a seller to transfer their rights in IP addresses" or something of that nature. But just as real property rights are transferred and yet referred to casually as "land" or a "house" etc, or as intellectual property rights are transferred and yet referred to as a "book" or a "song", I found it convenient to refer to the bundle of rights associated with an IP address block as simply "IP addresses".  I will probably do so again in the future, but I trust that we're all intelligent enough to understand.

Perfectly understandable.  You should recognize that my responses will 
be based on ARIN's view that address holders do have certain rights (such 
as exclusive right to be the registrant of the address space within the 
ARIN registry database as well as the exclusive right to transfer the 
registration of the space), but that those rights intersect other rights 
with respect to the same registrations.  The policies adopted in the 
region are the basis by which we will manage the registry and hence 
the intersection of these rights.

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN