[address-policy-wg] 2013-03 New Policy Proposal (No Need - Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Cleanup)

Hi all, please excuse my very stumbling english.


On 20/03/2013 17:16, Milton L Mueller wrote:
>It is competitive biddingin the market that should resolve who gets what,

> The only argument I have heard for continued needs assessments comes what I see as
> unfounded fears of "speculation" and "hoarding." But these are economically driven
> phenomena.

I think Ripe NCC has quite constantly refused to consider IP shoud be considerated
as a product one could sell, and rather followed the conversation goal as a way to
protect the public ressource. This is what I expect from a non-commercial structure
actually, and from a regulator.


>  For these to be fatal objections, opponents of this proposal must believe
> that substantial acquisitions of number blocks would come from parties who have
> a) no operational use for the numbers and b) no interest in on-selling them efficiently
> to third parties who do have a use for them. Further, opponents must also believe that
> c) IPv6 does not constitute a viable intermediate-term option that acts as a constraint
> on the price of v4 transactions. I reject all three of these premises.

I strongly disagree with this view.

First because the fact that some companies have enough money to buy high price
ressource does not mean that other companies that have equally legitimate need
but less ressources should be less served.

Second, because letting this happen would authorize a market of abusively bought
addresses develop in the hands of LIRs that so doing would significantly deviate
from the Ripe goals that include to avoid waste, and not commercial abuse of a
public ressource. Some examples have show already that resellers could buy an IP
for 5€ and re-sell it for 10 €. That is 10,000 a /22 i.e. the space one can get
buy simply becoming a LIR.

This risk is particularly present while allocations reselling is now possible,
which makes financial dealing of large IP spaces possible that bypass the IPv4
depletion max /22 allocation rule.

I'm sorry but IPv6 does *not* yet represent a viable short-term nor middle-term
option for many companies that *do* need IPv4 ressources now, either to establish
their activity or to grow, wether they implement IPv6 in dual stack or not. This
is a cruel evidence for some of our LIR members today.


However since the changes only affect the way LIRs will make use of allocations
they already have, and not deregulate the distribution of the remaining space
between LIRs nor impact the allocation reselling mechanism, I am not opposed
to this "do as you wish with your allocation" move.

Nonetheless I feel like the conversation goal should not be completely erased
from this policy, and remain. This makes sense also regarding the actual /22 max
allocation rule, that *does* obey the conversation goal and should be backed by
this principle.

I also think the IPv4 policy should not be thought without a global vision of
allocations movements and banish financial deals over public ressource. In
particular, I think direct LIR to LIR reselling of empty space shoud be forbidden,
and of partially occupied space sould be allowed under certain conditions aiming
to garantee a business or a service is actually sold (not public ressource).

Best regards,
Sylvain