On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 12:00 AM, John Levine <johnl@iecc.com> wrote:
And in complete fairness - why should folks who received vast tracts of addresses for little or no cost under a justified-need regime now have free reign to monetize their sale?
All of the real estate in my part of New York traces back to Military Tract so and so. In the 1790s the state allocated two million acres on a justified-need basis, with the rule being that if you were a Revolutionary War veteran, that justified you getting 600 acres, free. You had to provide your own mule.
Once the lots were all handed out, in subsequent transfers, nobody justified anything.
John, Convincingly said here on an ISP mailing list. But what about the folks who were denied address assignments by ARIN policies over the last 15 years? Denied them based on the fiction that ISPs didn't own IP addresses, that they were merely holding the addresses in trust for the public they serve. With the IPv4 free pool almost totally allocated, what's our residual responsibility to the folks that we (and by we I mean you) deliberately prevented from getting addresses while forking over /9's to Verizon? It might have been wiser to handle IPv4 addresses in a property-like regime. It might yet be smarter to handle IPv6 addresses that way. But we didn't handle IPv4 addresses that way and now that the free pool is nearly empty there would be significant fairness issues with any plan to allow current registrants to treat their IPv4 address holdings as if they were fee simple real estate. Like those 600 acres and the mule.
If you want to sell and I want to buy, that's that and the county records it for a nominal clerical fee. You will doubtless find similar histories all over the country.
Taxes. Nearly everywhere real estate is owned. A non-trivial percentage of the land's sale value in real estate taxes year after year after year. Makes it tough to horde or under-utilize land. When paired with other progressive tax regimes that discourage leasing in favor of leveraged purchases, tends to balance early ownership inequities over time. Even Hawaii's ownership by the Doles, Baldwins and Robinsons is slowly falling to the relentless hammering of taxes. Ready to forge ahead with ownership, the rights of ownership and the great privilege that is property taxes in the IPv4 addressing realm? Be careful what you wish for. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004