errrk - do we all really want to engage in this public resource economics discussion here yet for yet another round? Yes we apparently do! fair enuff. Public resource economics differs from normal market distribution economics in that the consideration that charging for a public resource can be an effective tool in ensuring equitable distribution and equitable exploitation opportunity as a premium to the cost of the production and distribution infrastructure associated with the public distribution of the resource. Of course this is not always the case, and typically a public resource distribution space couples regulation with a tariff to achieve the ultimate outcome of fair and equitable distribution. The radio spectrum is perhaps the best covered territory here when looking at this space in relation to the policy debate over IP address management. At the moment we are using the currently unallocated pool of IPV4 address space as the major policy lever here. as long as this pool is viewed as being sufficiently large to accomodate future demand modulo the current allocation practices then this is probably a workable policy application lever (after all that's the only lever we have left!). However a "once and forever" allocation policy of release of space from this pool effectively predicts an inevitable demise of this management mechanism given the nature of the rapacious demand the market is exerting on this resource of the unallocated space. My view is that moderation of the registries' policies to whatever extent we devise is at best a very interim measure which never addresses the nature of the problem in the long run. We are left with a scenario where the IPV4 address space will inevitably be a traded commodity, and the value of the space will be determined by the percieved value of the address modulo issues of routeability, alternative mechanisms of dynamic address translation and the perceived value of deployment of IPv6 as an alternative to securing V4 space. Thanks, Geoff (trying to keep a quite complex subject as short and pithy as possible)