Hi Erik,I can certainly understand the urge to see action -- Geoff's impressive collection of train wreck photos is always hovering in the back of my own mind -- but I think the "humbled by the complexities" sentiment is even more appropriate at this particular moment. Although full privatization may not be the intent of this policy, it's certainly one possible outcome (and one that has been contemplated for a long time, c.f., http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1744). If things did turn out that way, I'd speculate that the results would be at least as profound as other recent major privatization initiatives -- e.g., all of the assets in the most of the post-Soviet world (esp. Russia, Poland, etc.). Those episodes teach that things rarely turn out as planned.
Basically, my concern is not that we cannot capture the idea of limits and/or reversability in policy-speak and incorporate that into a transfer proposal; it's about whether such language would or could have any binding effect after the fact. It seems to me that once a transfer transaction has occurred, the result will necessarily intersect will all kinds of property-related rights, obligations, enforcement mechanisms, etc. In that context, conflicting RIR rules might be interpreted as a kind of "prior restraint", albeit from an alien (or perhaps inferior/subordinate) legal jurisdiction. In such circumstances a transfer recipient might seek and have a chance of receiving local injunctive relief from "foreign" RIR requirements.
IANAL, but that's what I'd do if for whatever reason I wanted to have free and clear title to address space.
Anyway, I've copied an excerpt from a forthcoming paper on this topic below, FYI.
Maybe we could get some corporate attorneys from different national jurisdictions around the region to assess this risk...?
Regards, TV *****" How then would IPv4 come to achieve the status of private property? This would not need to happen all at once or as a result of a specific action to “privatize IPv4 addresses.” Rather, it could happen incrementally, beginning with something as simple as the material fact of a private, bilateral exchange of IPv4 addresses for money. If IPv4 continues to be an essential, non-substitutable input for Internet service delivery, then sooner or later transactions like this that are not clearly mediated by a non-interested third party (i.e., something like an RIR) are likely to occur with some regularity. Whereas transactions in the context of such mediation might retain enough of the RIR’s former special status to resist attributions of de facto privatization -- whether made by buyers, sellers, or third parties – unmediated transactions may retain few features meriting continued special status or immunity from such claims. For example, will accountants and tax officials regard such transactions as capital expenditures or operating expenses? Will IPv4 purchased in one jurisdiction and assigned in another be subject to tariffs and/or transfer pricing restrictions? Will they be subject to sector-specific direct investment requirements and/or restrictions? Will privacy restrictions preclude the publication of WHOIS data, or mandate the publication of data deemed to be privacy infringing in other jurisdictions -- or alternately just immunize resource recipients from registration requirements? Resolving uncertainties like this will almost certainly result in many legal battles, any of which might expose additional "latent ambiguities" that previously had been obscured by the novelty of Internet technologies and the non-property status that once kept address policy-related matters invisible, or at least orthogonal, to most national legal systems. Eventually, at least some rulings are likely to favor private property status, and in turn those decisions could become precedents for future IPv4 private property claims. Finally, given the freedom to act unilaterally in ways that previously have been demonstrated to tip IPv4 into the private property category, which status are commercial network services providers more likely to prefer?"
On Aug 28, 2008, at 4:35 AM, Erik Kline wrote:
If there is a credible expectation that meaningful fine-tuning would remain possible after the fact, then that might make a radical undertaking likethis somewhat easier for current dissenters to embrace...This is essentially what I was trying to ask. If it's possible to run it as an "experiment" where everyone gets to "taste test" and yet retain a safe means to call a halt to it if it's all becoming too bitter somehow (or too sweet?) then it's possible to measure things that can only be conceived of in theory at this point. I'm *naively* imagining the following: 1. The market would be open for a period of, say, 15 months (to pick a random amount of time). 2. At the end of this time all transfers would stop and registrations would remain fixed in the state on the date of the closing of the market. 3. All those participating agree to be bound by these terms, i.e. knowing full well that the market will close and may never reopen. Certainly there's an argument that the promise of a market that will eventually be "closed for renovation ... indefinitely" is so small that it will not be attractive for players to participate at all. However that too would be a useful data point to have collected: even the opportunity of trading netblocks for X months wasn't interesting. That might mean folks aren't (yet) desperate enough or ...? And if they did start swapping, then that would invalidate the argument that the value of trading netblocks is solely in the lack of oversight by APNIC. Being mostly or entirely clueless I don't know that I have much of a stake or a vested interest in the outcome. I'm just a bit of an anarchist and wanted to ask about taking an experimental, and therefore data-driven, approach. (Not to imply that previous approaches have not involved data or anything derogatory at all; I'm not privy to anything that went before this.) Ignorant beyond measure of the vast complexities, -Erik