[arin-ppml] Draft proposal that needs some wordsmithing

[Andy Koch]

On Friday, May 6, 2011, Mike Burns <mike at nationwideinc.com> wrote:

> Why the market would work to bring addresses into productive use, is that people are motivated by personal self-interest.
> So a person (organization, entity) who had addresses which were dis- or under-used would be motivated by the money he could get by selling the addresses.
> The buyer of addresses would be establishing, through his willingness to part with money for them, that he thought he could profit by having them.
> If the buyer is putting these addresses to some use which is profitable to him, they will have moved from disuse to use through the operations, in a free market, of people motivated by their own self interest.
> These are the basic forces at action, and I think these would be the basic transactions of the ip address transfer market.
>
> Yes, a speculator or hoarder could purchase addresses and not put them to use, but he would only do that if he thought he could profit by selling them later, or profit in some other way.
> A speculator or hoarder (or any other buyer) could also lose money if he is unable to profit from his acquisition for whatever reason.

While a market does bring the benefit of an address holder becoming
more efficient in their use of addresses due to potential gains for
freeing space, I do not see where the removal of needs justification
further enhances this market. Even with our current policies in-place,
including justification, a market is developing that will meet this
enhanced efficiency.



<snip>

> My argument is that retaining needs analysis to approve transfers is no longer required to ensure efficiency, and maintaining it can cause transactions to go off-books, to the detriment of all.

True, needs justification is no longer necessary to improve
efficiency. However, it does prevent price inflation due to
speculation and hoarding. As such, I do not support removing needs
justification from policy.

Andrew Koch
andrew.koch at gmail.com