North American Network Operators Group
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Re: IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

  • From: Owen DeLong
  • Date: Tue Feb 19 14:33:48 2008


On Feb 19, 2008, at 11:08 AM, Joe Maimon wrote:



Owen DeLong wrote:

This would create significant legal challenges and costs.

I dont understand how they could prevail. Suppose I decided to tell people that as far as I was concerned this 32 bit number up to that 32bit number would be available for their use in whatever manner they wanted, like printing them on t-shirts, and that they would have the privilege of paying me for the guarantee that I would do so uniquely.

Barring a prior agreement, what grounds does any third party have to object?

The argument could be made that some form of prior agreement exists that the
legacy holders have already received that assignment under those terms and that the
RIRs have accepted a burden to preserve that.

Thus, your "Barring a prior agreement" condition is not met.

For that matter, aside from consensus and inertia, what would stop the operator community as a whole from setting up shop with a "forked" registry that had no contractual agreements with anybody prior?

Nothing. However, do you really think that is viable?
1. Consensus would be very hard to achieve.
2. Identifying a single entity to manage such a "forked" registry vs. a bunch
of islands of registration would be even harder.
3. Much breakage and instability would likely result.
4. Do you have any illusion that this would do anything other than beg
government(s) to try and get involved in regulating address space?

Owen