[arin-ppml] ARIN-PPML 2015-2

[Matthew Kaufman]

On 6/3/2015 1:10 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:
> It matters because the ability to obtain unlimited address space absent justified need could be used nefariously in a variety of ways, including, but not limited to:
> 	1.	Competitive advantage
> 	2.	Anticompetitive practices
> 	3.	Price gouging
> 	4.	Market manipulation
>

That's all true. The ability to obtain unlimited address space *could* 
be used that way. Of course with a finite amount of space and without a 
free pool, it is really hard to "obtain unlimited address space".

Things that stand in the way:
1. There isn't an "unlimited" amount of address space
2. No buyer in the transfer market has an "unlimited" amount of money 
(and even if they did, they wouldn't spend it doing this unless there 
was some way to profit from it, which really needs to suppose that they 
can also prevent IPv6 from happening)
3. At least so far, there's more space available to transfer than buyers 
(suggested by the fact that so far, we are not seeing significant 
bidding wars between big players going after the same pieces of space) - 
this suggests that even entities which could afford to do what you claim 
will happen aren't doing it.
4. And most important, almost all of the space is already in the hands 
of organizations that need it for their own purposes, so won't be 
willing to sell. Your employer, my employer, and others have all 
acquired space their need for their current and ongoing operations - the 
only way in the near future to acquire the space that Microsoft or 
Amazon (for instance) has acquired to run their cloud services would be 
to purchase the entire company. And then you'd be doing an 8.2 transfer!

And because those organizations have the space they need for their own 
purposes, none of the things you are worried about can matter:

Competitive advantage? Anticompetitive practices? Doesn't really work 
against competitors who already have space.

Price gouging? Market manipulation? Can't do that to people who already 
have the space they need.

Matthew Kaufman