[arin-ppml] About needs basis in 8.3 transfers

[Owen DeLong]

On Jun 6, 2014, at 8:06 AM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

> This debate has descended into rather nasty and unconstructive name calling. So if I am not mistaken with the attribution here, we have Woodcock calling Huberman 'idiotic,' a devotee of Ayn Rand (how did she get in here?), the moral equivalent of a slave trader, and a self-indulgent non-adult.  

No, you have Woodcock calling Huberman’s idea idiotic. While I think the term is a bit vitriolic, I agree with Bill that it is, in fact, ill-advised at best.

> Bill, the entire community has already recognized the legitimacy of markets for IPv4 numbers. Transfer markets are institutionalized and have been for 4 years. So any argument that is based on comparing it to the slave/drug trade is gone.  

Yes, but the entire community has also consistently stated that they want to preserve the needs test on those transfers. Drug trade is, therefore, a perfectly valid comparison because some drug sales are permitted by public policy and some are not. Both take place, but there are legitimate public policy reasons for prohibiting them. (No, I am not a fan of current drug policy in the US, but that has nothing to do with the market issues being raised here).

> All we are debating is the presence or absence of needs assessment as a gatekeeping function for that market. 

Correct.

> This is a fairly administrative and technical argument, not a moral one. Efficiency is the key criterion (not fairness, really). If you support needs assessments you have to make a case that the costs and burdens associated with it are justified by quantifiable benefits. In this case, inefficiency is unfairness: if the needs assessment process prevents resources from going where they are wanted most, or if the cost burdens associated with the process exceed the value of the numbers acquired for small operators, or if it is shown that large, established companies with well-established relationships to ARIN can navigate the process more easily, then there are signs that needs assessment is unfair because of its inefficiencies.

I disagree. There are moral implications and ramifications to what happens if one takes the regulations off of a market and turns it into the wild west. Needs assessment prevents addresses from going unconstrained to the highest bidder. While I realize that from an economists perspective, it is assumed that bid is equivalent to want, in the real world outside of the economists ivory tower, sometimes bid is limited by ability to pay and does not reflect want at all. In addition, there is the question of want vs. need and whether we should allow some greedy entities excessive want to override the rights of someone else’s need.

It has repeatedly been shown that small organizations are, in fact, able to navigate ARIN’s process just fine. ARIN has far more small members than large and far more small end-users than large.

> You have to do a better job of explaining why it is "fair" to force a willing seller and a willing buyer to submit to an additional step when that step both limits the quantity of resources available for transfer and raises the cost of participating in the market by a substantial degree. 

It is fair because it protects the rights of entities with legitimate needs from a cornering of the market by those with means. On the other hand, it does not, in fact, substantially increase the cost of participating in the market. At worst, it is a small increase. If you would argue otherwise, then I would say you need to provide evidence to support that and not just on a few corner cases, but evidence of a systemic problem that applies to the majority of requests.

Owen

> 
> --MM
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of Bill Woodcock
> 
> Your argument that ARIN needs to step out of the way of the human slaves market, recognize its validity, and duly record the transfers of those slaves, because Ayn Rand, is idiotic.  And if you think that's not what you just said, you need to step back and reflect a little before touching your keyboard.
> 
> We self-regulate, rather than wallowing in the trough of self-indulgence, because we are (speaking collectively and aspirationally, at least) adults.  As such, we don't want our power to self-regulate removed.
> 
> 
> 
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