Nothing prevents the RIR-community from changing the rules to reclaim un-announced space *if* there is consensus in support for such a move.
There never will be consensus as long as I, and other people from global IP network operators are involved in RIPE policy making. I would say that is a guarantee that there will *NEVER* be any change to addressing policy which would give public Internet usage some kind of priority over private internet usage. My company has an important part of our business, i.e. very important customers, using a global IP internet which is not interconnected to the public Internet. Let me quote from the July 1st issue of Waters magazine, a publication serving the technology side of the global financial services industry: In one of the few categories to remain completely unchanged in this year's rankings, BT Radianz has clinched a fifth successive victory in the race to be the best financial network provider. Since 2004, Waters readers have consistently voted for Radianz and that trend shows no sign of changing just yet. That global IP internet is one of the many non-public internets that are used by multiple companies in one industry or another. Some of these networks are big, like ours, for instance in the automotive industry or in aviation. Others are small and are basically an extranet with a handful of business partners who want to exchange IP traffic but do not want it to transit the public Internet. This is the reality of today, where IP networking technology is ubiquitous. That does not mean that everyone just plugs into the nearest Internet access connectivity. It means that private internets are growing faster, and some day they may be growing collectively faster than the public Internet. --Michael Dillon