"...and hilarity ensued. Not."
Sigh. I am certainly not happy to see this and I must confess dismay that the subject rears its ugly head. My life has been better since i stopped paying attention to these people hoping that they would sink beneath the surface of the sea.
I looked at the Cave Bear blog and saw nothing there that offered any kind of concise clear picture of WHAT their proposed allocation policy was and why it was bad.
This is all a tempest in a teapot and it is all caused by a poor choice of headings and seems to be a knee jerk reaction to several possible ways in which the heading can be misunderstood. The heading in question is "IP4 Global Allocation Policy". But the truth of the matter is found in the first clause: "Whereas, the ASO Address Council has forwarded a codification of existing global policies for allocation of IPv4 address blocks from IANA to the Regional Internet Registries (RIRs), affirming that the Policy had been approved in accordance with the policy development process adopted and specified by the ASO MOU." This has nothing whatsoever to do with IPv4 allocations to IP network operators or end users, both of which are governed by REGIONAL policies created and administered by the REGIONAL Internet Registries. I think it is a good think that ICANN has accepted a policy which treats all regions evenly and a policy which was created, bottom up, by the regional groups themselves. ICANN is not perfect but it is hard to see anything wrong with this particular action. --Michael Dillon