[members-discuss] Sign-up fee for additional LIR account

On Sun, Jul 24, 2016, at 05:07, David Sanchez wrote:
> It’s pretty obvious that there will always be confronted interests among
> LIRs if we put on the table the possibility that their membership fees
> should be based on their ipv4 resource use (one simple idea: your
....
> However, I don’t think this will ever work because, to begin with, most
> probably it cannot be implemented without tons of legal issues.

That would actually be possible, at least in theory.
Just remember that 5 years ago the billing scheme was based on tiers:
https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-499
In 2011, a new billing scheme, with even more tiers was rejected by the
membership (or at least those voting at the GM).
In 2012, two options were proposed, one maintaing tiers (rejected
124/148, 39 absentions) and one with a flat membership fee (approved
197/105, 11 abstentions)
https://www.ripe.net/participate/meetings/gm/meetings/september-2012

Four years have passed since, and membership count has singificatively
increased. So did vote count at GMs.
So something can be tried, but there is absolutely no guarantee that it
will pass.

> I’m not asking to propose those rules. Let’s say that currently allocated
> IPv4 space is a right-to-use as long as you’re a LIR disregarding its
> actual usage, and that membership fees will be kept in the same context
> (a bigger member may pay triple the smaller as a maximum). However transfer
> policies change to disallow transfers between members and set RIPE as the
> sole entity allowed to transfer IPv4 space to/from members. It could even
> work in a similar way to a stock market with a big difference: price is
> static and set by RIPE, and the goal is to maintain the price as stable
> as possible (ideally completely unchanged) until the full depletion of IPv4.

Elvis Velea will be able to explain you how this may lead to a hidden
transfer market, where transfers are not recorded in the database but
baked by heavy legalese. This what seems to be happening in the US, so
EMEA (without the A part) may be different due to international contact
enforcement issues.... or not ...

> New LIRs would have to pay both for the sign-up fees and the purchase of
> their first allocation, thus discouraging the setup of unneeded new LIRs.

Not going to work, RIPE NCC does not wish (and normally neither would
you) to be come assimilated to a "seller" (commercial for-profit
entity).
Even if there are aspects that may get some people to consider it
already "commercial, for-profit", the dutch tax administration is not
YET there.

As already told, we should have been at the right place (right
mailing-lists) many years ago (minium 6-7, ideally 10 or more) in order
to prevent the situation we have right now.

-- 
Radu-Adrian FEURDEAN