[address-policy-wg] 2012-05 New Draft Document and Impact Analysis Published (Transparency in Address Block Transfers)

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> Yes, actually, or at least *more private*. IP space is not just
> allocated/assigned to corporations but also to private individuals.

I am quite sympathetic to that, for natural (as opposed to legal) persons, but that whole issue is not relevant to this policy proposal. You are considering a policy change for the Whois, not for transfers transparency. Please don't confuse the two.

> Who might that "we" be who need to assess how the market is working?
> It seems to me that this sort of data (nicely aggregated lists of address
> space transfers and refusals) would mostly be useful to marketroids.
> Especially those who have various "get IP quick" scams on offer.

On the contrary, brokerages would benefit from less transparency. Specialized brokerages, or what you somewhat insultingly refer to as "marketroids," will be easily able to analyze the Whois data to find out what transactions took place. It will pay them to know this and so you have widened the gap between what they know and what the rest of us know. It is the rest of us who will be left in the dark. The less we all know about the supply and demand conditions, the higher the margins and less efficient the market will be. 

So the "we" who need to assess the market are network operators who may be considering participating in that market, policy makers who want to know how well it is working, and policy researchers who want to answer the questions policy makers have. 

> For one thing, personal data in the EU remains the property of the
> individual.  This is not the case, eg. if it somehow gets to the US

IP numbers will be traded in blocks. They do not function as PII (personally identifiable information) until and unless they are assigned to specific individuals as IP addresses. Therefore there are no issues related to data protection in a market transparency policy. And again, the information is there, we are just making it more accessible. 

Once again, you are confusing some of your concerns about privacy with Transparency in Address Block Transfers. The proposed policy 2012-05  neither improves the privacy situation nor makes it any worse than it is now. If you want to propose a Whois privacy policy to RIPE I would encourage you to do so, but by latching on to this policy, you are barking up the wrong tree.