[arin-ppml] Fwd: ARIN-prop-165 Eliminate Needs-Based Justification

[George Bonser]

> On Behalf Of Tom Vest
> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Fwd: ARIN-prop-165 Eliminate Needs-Based
> Justification
> 
> Consider how other de facto non-duplicable "bottleneck" inputs that are
> critical to entering some market tend to be priced (absent regulatory
> intervention) when the only source(s) for those inputs are incumbent
> market participants.
> 
> There is a straightforward explanation for this behavior, but it seems
> to get very little attention, straightforward or otherwise, in
> conventional economics.

I don't believe it is within ARIN's mandate to "create markets" of any sort. And this would be particularly so out of creating "real estate" out of the IP address space at the precise point in time where things are going to already be bad enough in that space.  Maybe after v4 becomes operationally obsolete, no big deal, but I still don't see how this gives all players in North America any operational advantage.

The only advantage I could see is that some legacy holder might transfer some unused resources to someone with deep pockets but someone with deep pockets is likely to be the most capable of migrating to v6 and might be attempting to obtain v4 addresses for no other reason than to create a barrier of entry to competition.  

There might be other ways of accomplishing the voluntary relinquishing of unused legacy space.  One of those ways might be simple peer pressure.  Simply publishing the top ten holders of unused legacy space, for example, in a very public way might be enough to generate some movement over time.  The thing is that any market (or more accurately, any "killing" to be made by brokering scarce resources) will probably have a very short window of time.  I also don't believe it is in the community interest to do things that would foster the continued growth of IPv4.