On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 12:22 PM, John R. Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
I wouldn't for a moment claim that IPv4 space was a way that was uniformly fair or wise or close to ideal. But I don't think you're going to have much luck imposing fairness and wisdom retroactively on people who've already got the space.
John. As things stand, IP addresses you've gained control of in the past decade and a half you gained under a contract in which you explicitly agreed that they not only didn't belong to you but that your continued control was subject to the general public's pleasure as expressed through regularly revised ARIN public policy. You won't tear that up like an Indian treaty without first overcoming a certain amount of push back from that disenfranchised public. If you want IPv4 addressing to enter a legal regime similar to real estate, I suggest that among other things you figure out how the taxes should work and write some guidance for the pols before they start figuring it out for themselves. If you don't construct the public policy from the bottom up, you can count on someone else building it from the top down and no newly defined form of property with a quantifiable value is likely to escape taxation. Bear in mind that as with real property, tax regimes which encourage a concentration of ownership by a few wealthy owners will tend to be viewed with suspicion and disdain. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004