but if the bottom feeding scumsuckers who saw the opportunity now known as spam, or the ones who saw the opportunity now known as NXDOMAIN remapping, or the ones who saw the opportunity now known as DDoS for hire, realize that the next great weakness in the internet's design and protocols is explosive deaggregation by virtual shill networking, then we can expect business plans whereby well suited shysters march into MIT, and HP, and so on, offering to outsource this monetization. "you get half the money but none of the distraction, all you have to do is renumber or use NAT or IPv6, we'll do the rest." nothing in recorded human history argues against this occurring.
paul, this is not the spanish inquisition or the great crusades. nothing in human history argues against a lot of fantasies and black helicopters. and yes, some of them actually come true, c.f. iraq. but i have a business to run, not a religious crusade. there is no news at eleven, just more work to do. some time back what we now call legacy space was given out under policies which seemed like a good idea at the time. [ interestingly, these policies were similar to the policies being used or considered for ipv6 allocations today, what we later think of as large chunks that may or may not be really well utilized. have you seen the proposal in ripe to give everyone with v4 space a big chunk of v6 space whether they want it or not? ] the people who gave those allocations and the people (or organizations) who received them were not evil, stupid, or greedy. they were just early adopters, incurring the risks and occasional benefits. maybe it benefits arin's desperate search for a post-ipv4-free-pool era business model to cast these allocation holders as evil (see the video of arin's lawyer at nanog and some silly messages on the arin ppml list), with the fantasy that there is enough legacy space that arin can survive with its old business model for an extra year or two. i think of this as analogous to the record companies sending the lawyers out instead of joining the 21st century and getting on the front of the wave. i hope that the result in arin's case is not analogously tragic. arin's legacy registration agreement is quite lopsided, as has been pointed out multiple times. the holder grants and gives up rights and gains little they do not already have. but i am sure there will be some who will sign it. heck, some people click on phishing links. i suggest we focus on how to roll out v6 or give up and get massive natting to work well (yuchhh!) and not waste our time rearranging the deck chairs [0] or characterizing those with chairs as evil. randy --- [0] my wife used to admonish folk to think about those fools on the titanic who declined dessert.