[arin-ppml] Transfers by non-legacy address holders and perceived risk of reclamation

[John Curran]

On Sep 1, 2011, at 9:30 AM, Mike Burns wrote:

> My concern is for non-legacy address holders who want to sell via 8.3.
> ...
> My suggestion, of course, is to pass prop-151 to remove the specter of revokation audits from those under RSA, as it is already removed from legacy space.

Acknowledged; that does appear to address the ambiguity that
some may perceive in the present situation with respect to 
non-legacy address transfers.  

> If we just said that listing addresses for sale is a valid use of space, we would obviously allow people to hoard space they never really intend to sell simply by listing it.

Correct.  That is the difficult with providing an explicit
and indefinite "safe harbor" provision in policy for those 
trying to transfer resources; it would presume that such
efforts are all being made in good faith.  That does not 
rule it out as an option for addressing the situation; one
must consider the downside against merits of making clearer
policy.

> So there is no easy way out of our current policy situation except to wink and say that really, those addresses should be turned back in to ARIN, but as long as you are selling them to somebody we can do a justification test on , then we promise we won't audit you for utilization, as the RSA permits.
> 
> I think the uncertainty for the seller serves to reduce market liquidity.

Possibly.  Another option would be to explicitly change NRPM 12 
(or the RSA) to preclude reclamation for utilization in general,
if one accepts that the combination of overall demand for number
resources plus a functional market will result in underutilized 
resources being put to better use.

All interesting approaches to clarifying the situation, and worthy
of discussion by community.

Thanks for raising this topic!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN