In message <199810052200.PAA15671@bb.rc.vix.com>, "David R. Conrad" writes:
Karl,
Actually, there's every reason to believe that if you have space from prior to the adoption of RFC2008 and 2050 you indeed do have something which is (1) property, and (2) valuable if someone is willing to pay you for it.
As has been demonstrated repeatedly on this list and elsewhere, there are people who place not-insignificant value on addresses. The pragmatic among us would probably argue that even after 2008/2050 or any other pronouncement by any involved party, address space has value and in fact has had and will have value as long as it provides an opportunity for a service that has value. Arguments to the contrary are approximately equivalent to arguing the tide should not come in 'cause it messes up our nice sand castles.
From previous discussions it appears to me that address space only has value if it is globally reachable. And previously there has been discussion from organizations that state they would follow the guidlines and policies reached by the community and address transfer and validity. Thus, if ARIN disallowed a trasnfer, it is like that some percentage of large connectivity oriented organizitions, would refuse connectivity to this space.
I'm sure Karl will point out how this is a violates US law and is an unlawful monopoly. Then again, so is De-Beers who still operates with impuntity in the US, so the effectivitness of US law against these multinational consiparcy. So I'm not sure the US and its laws are an effectivity regulatory agency for this growing international problem. RIPE already operates an address verification service that service providers can use to verify the validity of a prefix. ARIN is discussing a route registry service.
From the people I've seen and talked to, my sense is that providers and users of the internet today, largely don't want to see the buying and selling of so called legacy space.
I guess I'll start to worry about it when the US Marshells show up on my doorstep. In the meantime the rest of us have an Internet to run. --- Jeremy Porter, Freeside Communications, Inc. jerry@fc.net PO BOX 80315 Austin, Tx 78708 | 512-458-9810 http://www.fc.net