Hi That RIPE quote is outdated. Document itself is dated "Date: 22 April 1996". Nowadays "value" cannot (or should not) be prescribed or declared, because as it stands, "value of a thing is what thing can bring". And clearly, IP numbers are very valuable comodity, if available. Legally, however, RIPE (or Internet community ?!) should clarify this "non selling position". That IP numbers cannot be OWNED, and therefore, since noone can claim ownership over certain IP number or IP range, noone is ENTITLED to SELL it, and noone is, therefore, able to buy it. Claiming that "IP numbers themselves" have "no intrinsic value" might be, under certain circumstances, misleading, since, if someone is able to prove othervise (say, "if I can earn money by selling and buying IP numbers/renges, then, hell, they DO have value, not only intrinsic but very real, and very tangible..) then he successfully (if a matter is referred to a court) might undermine current standing that "IP numbers have no intrinsic value". To put it bluntly, "we" should make sure that kind of behaviour (selling and/or trafficking with IP numbers) is treated the same way as selling anything that seller does not own in the first place. I presume, selling a real-estate that one does not own is a crime (fraud?!). At least it's a fraud in my country. Regards! Darko -- Mike Norris wrote:
why are we not allowed to sell ip address? i dont understand...please explain...thank you
Quote from ripe-152:
"By themselves, these resources have no intrinsic value; their worth is only realised in conjunction with the provision of Internet access. Thus, while registries may charge for their administrative and technical services, they may not charge for name space or address space as such; no unit cost or price tag can be attached to a domain name or to an IP address, public or private. "
See http://www.ripe.net/ripe/docs/ripe-152.html for the full document.
Regards.
Mike Norris