Also, from a research standpoint I'm curious as to why this organization thinks they need ARIN IP space to do what they do. Most of us know that's probably not true. I keep pretty close tabs on ongoing research in network location based services, dns mapping, online advertising, etc. I just smell BS or something really new and unique and am curious in either case.
One possibility: Traditional media deals are frequently done based on geographic regions. The momentum of these deals is being carried over into cyberspace where people are attempting to enforce such deals based on prefix analysis. The request here sounds like is an attempt to avoid creating yet another exemption in prefix analysis. Whether this is for deceptive purposes or not is left to the reader. From a systems perspective, to me it seems somewhat unproductive to shift a policy exemption on address filtering to an address allocation exemption. Either way, you have one-off complexity. Regards, Tony