[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2014-20: Transfer Policy Slow Start and Simplified Needs Verification

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> I do not believe IP as commodity is good for either operators, industry or the
> community.  It will however serve as a wealth generator for a select few,
> which again is not the objective of ARIN.  The good or bad of IP as a
> commodity is probably not the discussion though.  I apologize if I generated
> thread drift.

IP as a commodity is now a settled issue. We certainly are not debating that. However, your kind of religious opposition to market transfers often leads to expressions of opposition to policies that attempt to make the transfer markets work better for operators. I want to make it clear that I will not count that as serious or justifiable opposition to a policy proposal in any AC deliberations.

Your contention that ARIN should not support commodity trades is negated completely by a simple logic:

IF there is no more free pool, the only way to get additional v4 numbers is through the market. Ergo, ARIN's mission of number allocation requires it to make technically sound and economically efficient rules for market transfers of number blocks. IF ARIN doesn't do that, it isn't doing its job.

Further, if ARIN insists on validating need before before allowing number blocks to be transferred, then ARIN is by definition validating and supporting commodity sales. So if you want to be consistent about ARIN avoiding any support for commoditization of numbers, you should advocate that ARIN get out of the business of needs assessment for transfers entirely. Then it would be neither supporting nor involving itself in commodity transfers.

--MM