Owen said:
Sean said:
Hm, routing wars. Fun stuff. Expect much heat on this shortly... :(
[...]
The question boils down to who really does own the address space, and frankly, the fact that money changed hands causes me to lean more towads the person who paid.
Well, but was the changing of money for a *purchase* or a *lease* ? The coming CIDRization seems to lend itself more toward leasing your IPs from your provider than purchasing them... much like small companies rarely buy a suite in a larger building, instead they lease... with IPs though, the length of term of the lease would be something to the effect of 'while getting service from the same provider'.
--Zachary
Er... Remeber that this works for providers as well. They don't "own" the CIDR blocks they have either. They have them on loan from the address registries.
-- --bill
The problem comes when the idea of lease vs. purchase was unclear at the time money changed hands. If the policy of lease is enforced at the time of assignment, then all is well. If the addressee (for lack of a better term) received the address under a perceived buy which was later turned into a lease without any notice until they attempted to move the space, that is another issue. It is much the same issue as my outrage at NSI for retroactively modifying the terms of existing domain names. Owen