John, On Feb 18, 2008, at 9:48 AM, John Lee wrote:
ARIN (and other RIRs) and the rules of use of IP address were specifically setup to allow global communications around the world with a large number of entities on an equal basis.
More IP addresses were allocated prior to the creation of the RIRs than since. The terms under which those early allocations were made is a bit fuzzy (to put it mildly). ARIN is attempting to remedy this fuzziness by creating a "legacy RSA" in which you give up some potential rights in exchange for some potential rights (it also asserts ARIN has the right to decide what happens with all the legacy space which causes some concern internationally, but that's not relevant here). See http://www.arin.net/registration/legacy/ index.html for more information.
PS: The RIRs are community driven and so if the community wants to become a market place, they can petition ARIN have a vote and change if the majority of the community wants to.
The question really isn't whether the ARIN community will want a market to exist. A market, albeit black or grey, exists already. The question is how ARIN will deal with the market after the IPv4 free pool exhausts. Ignoring the market will likely result in the marginalization of ARIN for services such as registration of address space (for good or ill). Not ignoring the market will likely result in all sorts of 'fun', in the worst case similar to what has occurred in the domain name market. "Choose wisely." Regards, -drc