Hi, Of course, static IP address assignment is wasteful -- as demonstrated by your case (and justifying ones actions by pointing to others doing worse is seldom very effective), however a couple of questions/points:
Until IPv6 is widely used
Are any ISPs seriously considering deploying IPv6 in the forseeable future (e.g., what level of demand are ISPs in the US seeing for IPv6)?
and address space is not so critical, we have to conserve address space and using it wisely.
Address space will (presumably) always be critical -- after all, it is a bit hard to connect to the Internet without it. As such, using it wisely would seem a good idea. Of course, whether one needs to "conserve" address space and whether conservation implies wise use would depend on the answer to the question above and what one thinks will happen when the free address pool approaches exhaustion.
Perhaps in the UK there are different requirements for allocation of address space than InterNIC/ARIN.
Of course there are (look at why there are different regional registries in the first place). For example, what happens when a new ISP with no previous allocation history starts up in the US as compared to what happens when it starts up in Europe or the AP region. Other examples exist (the static IP address assignment issue isn't one of them -- all the registries have a similar policy now). These differences, however, are something the registries try to minimize and work to resolve internally. Too bad there can't be a public forum in which such stuff is worked on without the raving lunatics coming out of the woodwork and turning the forum into meaningless repetitive dribble. In response to the original statement that started this thread, I'd be interested to know how one would go about putting technological djinn back into their respective bottles. Blackhole feeds, et al, exist because they serve a purpose. Like any tool, they can be misused. I'm sort of suprised that some governments haven't already required ISPs in their countries to accept "official" black hole feeds, but I suspect it'll happen within the next year or so. Of course, many people wish nuclear weapons weren't invented too... Regards, -drc