this is exactly the problem. this implies that the ip space is an asset of the seller, which it is not. it is a commons, and if it is sparse, as any one has the same right to it, it is to be redistributed according to need, fair and equally.
The IP address space is not and never has been a commons. Not for those of us who actually understand the vocabulary of resource economics and know what the term "commons" means. For IP addresses to be a "commons" they all would have to be available for use for anyone at any time; i.e., there would have to be no exclusive occupation of it. And of course that doesn't work technically, does it? IP address blocks have to be uniquely and exclusively assigned to specific users to function on the internet. Which means the address pool is not a commons - end of story. Because IP addresses are exclusively assigned, they can be governed either as common pool resources (in which a governance agency establishes rules regulating the extraction of resource units from a free pool) or as tradeable property (in which holders allocate the resources by making trades among themselves) or some combination of both. All that matters is which method is more efficient and produces more benefits for Internet users. Leave your religious beliefs behind. But after IPv4 exhaustion, common pool governance of v4 space breaks down completely and the best way to ensure efficient utilization of remaining v4 resources is to allow market-based transfers. These transfers should be made as flexible and easy as possible. There is probably no need for holding periods, although they don't seem to do a lot of harm as long as they are 1 year or less. Needs assessment is increasingly arbitrary and pointless in such an environment. I know needs-basis is another item of religious faith in some circles, but the idea that RIR staff can accurately assess "need" given inherent uncertainty about time horizons and technical development, is just wrong. Organizations should be allowed to buy as much of an asset as they think they need, and can afford, in order to advance their business interests. Let the price system sort out who really needs what. It should also be obvious that the market for these addresses should be global, not regional. Thus, I support proposed policy 2012-01, my only reservation being that the policy specifies that "Where the recipient is in another region, the conditions on the recipient as defined in the counterpart RIR's transfer policy at the time of the transfer will apply." In this blog post I raised some issues with that and hope that the authors of the policy would respond. http://www.internetgovernance.org/ Milton L. Mueller Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies Internet Governance Project http://blog.internetgovernance.org
On 04/11/2012 10:04 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
The IP address space is not and never has been a commons. Not for those of us who actually understand the vocabulary of resource economics and know what the term "commons" means. For IP addresses to be a "commons" they all would have to be available for use for anyone at any time; i.e., there would have to be no exclusive occupation of it. And of course that doesn't work technically, does it? IP address blocks have to be uniquely and exclusively assigned to specific users to function on the internet. Which means the address pool is not a commons - end of story.
this is simply wrong. you do not know what you are talking about. i don't think there's more to say about it. maybe so much: i live in a place where commons have been a central and vital concept for society for hundreds of years, and following your frivolous statement it never could have existed. as an auxilliary measure i'd claim ownership of your ips. ah what the heck, 0/0 is mine. that's all so ridiculous - forgive me if i don't regard further discussion following this thread as sensible or worthwile.
Thus, I support proposed policy 2012-01,
well then - bring it on to arin... ;) regards, Chris
Chris wrote:
On 04/11/2012 10:04 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
The IP address space is not and never has been a commons.
Well, I am not convinced that the discussion at that level is appropriate or even helpful. But - (caveat: I am not a native (american) english speaker nor an economist!) the description of "The Commons" in the Wikipedia (to me) seems to support Chris' point: " There are a number of important aspects that can be used to describe true commons. The first is that the commons cannot be commodified – if they are, they cease to be commons. The second aspect is that unlike private property, the commons is inclusive rather than exclusive — its nature is to share ownership as widely, rather than as narrowly, as possible. " The 3rd one offered seems to be irrelevant here, as IP numbers don't decay or vanish, due to being used (or not) on the Internet. Btw, what *is* suggested to be a Commons is the Internet as an encompassing space or entity. My contribution here is not meant to be a statement in favour or against the proposed policy. FWIW, Wilfried
Not for those of us who actually understand the vocabulary of resource economics and know what the term "commons" means.
For IP addresses to be a "commons" they all would have to be available for use for anyone at any time; i.e., there would have to be no exclusive occupation of it. And of course that doesn't work technically, does it? IP address blocks have to be uniquely and exclusively assigned to specific users to function on the internet. Which means the address pool is not a commons - end of story.
this is simply wrong. you do not know what you are talking about. i don't think there's more to say about it. maybe so much: i live in a place where commons have been a central and vital concept for society for hundreds of years, and following your frivolous statement it never could have existed.
as an auxilliary measure i'd claim ownership of your ips. ah what the heck, 0/0 is mine.
that's all so ridiculous - forgive me if i don't regard further discussion following this thread as sensible or worthwile.
Thus, I support proposed policy 2012-01,
well then - bring it on to arin... ;)
regards,
Chris
i believe mueller's definition of a commons to be formally correct. but is arguing about the term of any constructive use? randy
Hi, On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 06:09:21PM +0900, Randy Bush wrote:
i believe mueller's definition of a commons to be formally correct. but is arguing about the term of any constructive use?
It's not overly important whether we paint IP addresses red or blue, as long as we agree what can be done with blocks of those. So I agree with you here :-) Folks, we know that transfer policies are a very emotional thing - we've been there in with our local transfer policy, and I think Remco still has scars to show. So maybe take a step back and ask yourself whether you want a religios debate (which will not go anywhere), or whether we can find a pragmatic solution together that takes reality into account. So - I think it's unavoidable to accept that transfers *will* and *do* happen (if "IP networks as such" cannot be transferred, people will just trade parts of their company that happen to "own" the network resources). So what we should focus on is - ensure that we know who has a legitimate claim to which network ("owns it") - ensure that this is properly documented in all involved RIR registries Gert Doering -- APWG chair -- have you enabled IPv6 on something today...? SpaceNet AG Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann D-80807 Muenchen HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen) Tel: +49 (89) 32356-444 USt-IdNr.: DE813185279
-----Original Message-----
So what we should focus on is
- ensure that we know who has a legitimate claim to which network ("owns it") - ensure that this is properly documented in all involved RIR registries
Agreed. To which I would add: - ensure that transfers can take place globally not just regionally according to harmonized rules.
On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 3:57 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller@syr.edu> wrote:
-----Original Message-----
So what we should focus on is
- ensure that we know who has a legitimate claim to which network ("owns it") - ensure that this is properly documented in all involved RIR registries
Agreed. To which I would add: - ensure that transfers can take place globally not just regionally according to harmonized rules.
to complicated, let's keep it RIPE only right now, then we just add another overlaying policy later that take care of that global part. -- Roger Jorgensen | rogerj@gmail.com | - IPv6 is The Key! http://www.jorgensen.no | roger@jorgensen.no
Hi, On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 04:03:26PM +0200, Roger Jørgensen wrote:
to complicated, let's keep it RIPE only right now, then we just add another overlaying policy later that take care of that global part.
There is no RIPE-only policy proposal on the table right now. Gert Doering -- APWG chair -- have you enabled IPv6 on something today...? SpaceNet AG Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann D-80807 Muenchen HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen) Tel: +49 (89) 32356-444 USt-IdNr.: DE813185279
Hi, On Thu, Apr 12, 2012 at 01:57:58PM +0000, Milton L Mueller wrote:
So what we should focus on is
- ensure that we know who has a legitimate claim to which network ("owns it") - ensure that this is properly documented in all involved RIR registries
Agreed. To which I would add: - ensure that transfers can take place globally not just regionally according to harmonized rules.
This was somewhat implicity by mentioning "all involved RIR registries" :-) Gert Doering -- APWG chairs -- have you enabled IPv6 on something today...? SpaceNet AG Vorstand: Sebastian v. Bomhard Joseph-Dollinger-Bogen 14 Aufsichtsratsvors.: A. Grundner-Culemann D-80807 Muenchen HRB: 136055 (AG Muenchen) Tel: +49 (89) 32356-444 USt-IdNr.: DE813185279
hi! On 04/12/2012 02:47 PM, Gert Doering wrote:
It's not overly important whether we paint IP addresses red or blue, as long as we agree what can be done with blocks of those. So I agree
true. - ips cannot be owned - allocations are valid as long as the prerequisites are true, otherwise they are subject to be reevaluated and adapted. it seems like today there's need for this to be put into another special paragraph in the policy. while i tend not to accept a priori declaration of arguments as off-limits in a discussion, i think distribution (which includes transfers) of ips according to need is the natural primacy of *IRs. then again, i don't see that or why this is currently not possible for rirs. in case of a block of ips that is not needed by a rir, i'd assume that a transfer to another rir asking for space because it is needed there wouldn't be a problem irl. while i'm convinced this would currently be done in a sensible way anyway, formalizing this probably wouldn't hurt, too. the major issue here according to the goals of ip administration is certainly aggregation. currently the blocks allocated to rirs are /8 i believe... inter-rir, aggregation should certainly be observed closely, so a reasonable size for blocks to be transfered from one rir with such spare blocks to another rir in need of such a block should be chosen (like, /16?). regards, Chris
-----Original Message-----
i believe mueller's definition of a commons to be formally correct. but is arguing about the term of any constructive use?
Maybe. If half the population discussing a proposal is hung up on a false, uninformed notion of what a commons is and opposes a proposal for that reason, we seem to have no choice but to clarify what the concept means. But I agree that the discussion can get sidetracked in endless ideological cruft. And probably will.
Milton, sometimes I liked you ideas and your attempts to stress frozen situation. But sometimes you reminded me some pages from Russian history - like Russian February Revolution or Trotsky approach (please, remeber that in Western interpretation it means different that ours - Russian). Sorry - just a memories. Dima On Apr 12, 2012, at 5:55 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
-----Original Message-----
i believe mueller's definition of a commons to be formally correct. but is arguing about the term of any constructive use?
Maybe.
If half the population discussing a proposal is hung up on a false, uninformed notion of what a commons is and opposes a proposal for that reason, we seem to have no choice but to clarify what the concept means. But I agree that the discussion can get sidetracked in endless ideological cruft. And probably will.
my working analogy is that IP addresses are roughly the same as spectrum. you can no more "own" 9870 Angstroms than you can "own" 127.0.80.42 all you get is right to use. /bill
On 11 April 2012 21:04, Milton L Mueller <mueller@syr.edu> wrote:
But after IPv4 exhaustion, common pool governance of v4 space breaks down completely and the best way to ensure efficient utilization of remaining v4 resources is to allow market-based transfers.
Why? Show a market where this is true... Surely the placing of a per unit value onto an item leads to a desire to acquire units where the scarcity of the that unit increases. Establishing an unfettered market is counter productive as the natural tendency is for those of wealth to acquire the resource and leads to governmental interference where there is a perceived "unfairness" in the distribution. I'm all for a inter-RIR transfer policy, just not this one J -- James Blessing 07989 039 476
Hi,
this is exactly the problem. this implies that the ip space is an asset of the seller, which it is not. it is a commons, and if it is sparse, as any one has the same right to it, it is to be redistributed according to need, fair and equally.
The IP address space is not and never has been a commons. Not for those of us who actually understand the vocabulary of resource economics and know what the term "commons" means. For IP addresses to be a "commons" they all would have to be available for use for anyone at any time; i.e., there would have to be no exclusive occupation of it. And of course that doesn't work technically, does it? IP address blocks have to be uniquely and exclusively assigned to specific users to function on the internet. Which means the address pool is not a commons - end of story.
Because IP addresses are exclusively assigned, they can be governed either as common pool resources (in which a governance agency establishes rules regulating the extraction of resource units from a free pool) or as tradeable property (in which holders allocate the resources by making trades among themselves) or some combination of both. All that matters is which method is more efficient and produces more benefits for Internet users. Leave your religious beliefs behind.
But after IPv4 exhaustion, common pool governance of v4 space breaks down completely and the best way to ensure efficient utilization of remaining v4 resources is to allow market-based transfers. These transfers should be made as flexible and easy as possible. There is probably no need for holding
i actually have to agree to this mostly so far - at least theoretically speaking. Some others might hate me for that opinion, but it's just formally correct like that and as i already stated before - i believe there's no reason not to treat IPv4 resources as a "tradeable property". I checked with reality and it told me, the world the internet lives in is mostly a marked based one. But from here on you're pretty much wrong, or ignore some facts:
periods, although they don't seem to do a lot of harm as long as they are 1 year or less. Needs assessment is increasingly arbitrary and pointless in such an environment. I know needs-basis is another item of religious faith in some circles, but the idea that RIR staff can accurately assess "need" given inherent uncertainty about time horizons and technical development, is just wrong. Organizations should be allowed to buy as much of an asset as they think they need, and can afford, in order to advance their business interests. Let the price system sort out who really needs what.
The RIRs and the community have shown that they can manage needs based allocation/assignment of scarce goods like IPv4 addresses pretty well the last decade(s) or so. Why on earth should it be pointless now just because there is (more) money involved? You need to understand that, even if IPv4 resources might rather become a "tradeable property" than they are a "commons", it's anyways a "scarce property". If we assume our marked economy usually is some kind of "social market economy", then there usually is some regulation to prevent a monopoly or misuse. The easiest and least market intrusive way to prevent that is to just keep up with a needs assessment. IF there is proof that some entity really needs the resources/IPv4 addresses, well, let them pay money for it, and allow a "trade" with another entity who doesn't need their resources anymore. But don't allow company X to buy all available space just because they can with their billions, and let them prevent competitors from entering the market or expand their business, or just sell the stuff again for a higher price. ==> Once again: The intention of the proposal is fine, there will be some kind of IPv4 space market, legally or not. We better have a good, global policy for that scenario. BUT, i doubt that any proposal that wants to do away with the needs-based approach will stand a chance in hell to get pass the community. There are too many good reasons not to change that.
It should also be obvious that the market for these addresses should be global, not regional.
Correct again, no objections. -- Mit freundlichen Grüßen / Kind Regards Sascha Lenz [SLZ-RIPE] Senior System- & Network Architect
On Apr 11, 2012, at 4:04 PM, Milton L Mueller wrote:
this is exactly the problem. this implies that the ip space is an asset of the seller, which it is not. it is a commons, and if it is sparse, as any one has the same right to it, it is to be redistributed according to need, fair and equally.
The IP address space is not and never has been a commons. Not for those of us who actually understand the vocabulary of resource economics and know what the term "commons" means. For IP addresses to be a "commons" they all would have to be available for use for anyone at any time; i.e., there would have to be no exclusive occupation of it. And of course that doesn't work technically, does it? IP address blocks have to be uniquely and exclusively assigned to specific users to function on the internet. Which means the address pool is not a commons - end of story.
Hi Milton, I appreciate that you're trying to educate the address policy community about an field of academic inquiry that some members may not be familiar with, but in your haste to scold I think you may have added more to confusion than clarity. If the goal was to inform, it probably would have made more sense to start out by highlighting the fact that Chris' claim was perfectly sensible with respect to "common pool resources" even if it might be somewhat inapt when describing the abstract class "commons" -- instead of just obliquely acknowledging that fact later, as you do below. Regardless, as Elinor Ostron said in her Annual IEA Hayek Memorial Lecture two weeks ago, there are many different kinds of "commons," just as there are many different kinds of markets and "command and control" mechanisms.
Because IP addresses are exclusively assigned, they can be governed either as common pool resources (in which a governance agency establishes rules regulating the extraction of resource units from a free pool) or as tradeable property (in which holders allocate the resources by making trades among themselves) or some combination of both. All that matters is which method is more efficient and produces more benefits for Internet users.
For those who would like to learn more about the analytical framework that Milton is using here, I would recommend his very interesting 2007 paper, "Property and Commons in Internet Governance." [http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1828102] FWIW, I think that this claim about governance alternatives is perfectly reasonable -- at least for the kind of discrete, self-contained, non-interactive common pool resources that scholars like Garret Hardin and Elinor Ostrum have written about so extensively -- e.g., grazing lands, forests, fisheries, and other things that are composed of divisible elements which, once fractional portions have been separated and possessed by individual private parties, both cease to be dependent for 100% of their value on all of the other fractional elements of that original common pool, and also cease to represent a potential threat to the value of all of the fractional portions that are held by *other* private parties. However, when it comes to the kind of "intrinsically interactive" or "network-dependent" common pool resources that *do* continue to be sensitively dependent, for better or worse, on their "sibling" resources even *after* they have been withdrawn from the common pool and are privately controlled (or "owned"), there really is no clear alternative. Granted, common pool resources of this particular type are rare, but IP addresses are not the first or the only resource of this kind. The common pool resource that we typically call "money," and in particular the ability of private parties to unilaterally impact that pool by creating or withdrawing "credit" is another. History has clearly demonstrated that treating common pool resources of this rather unusual kind as if they were a uncoordinated, freely tradable resource is not a very good idea; every past effort to replace coordination mechanisms for this kind of resource with pure voluntary market mechanisms has ended in failure, not infrequently accompanied by widespread immiseration.
Leave your religious beliefs behind.
Yellow card. Do we really want to go down this path again Milton? May I suggest that you henceforth dispense with the old ideological warfare rhetoric, so that I don't have to help clarify the context?
But after IPv4 exhaustion, common pool governance of v4 space breaks down completely and the best way to ensure efficient utilization of remaining v4 resources is to allow market-based transfers.
The first claim is speculative, and the second is just argument by assertion.
These transfers should be made as flexible and easy as possible. There is probably no need for holding periods, although they don't seem to do a lot of harm as long as they are 1 year or less. Needs assessment is increasingly arbitrary and pointless in such an environment. I know needs-basis is another item of religious faith in some circles,
Second yellow card.
but the idea that RIR staff can accurately assess "need" given inherent uncertainty about time horizons and technical development, is just wrong. Organizations should be allowed to buy as much of an asset as they think they need, and can afford, in order to advance their business interests. Let the price system sort out who really needs what.
While the price system is perhaps the best possible mechanism for allocating almost everything (other than network-dependent common pool resources), under certain circumstances it seems to work quite badly. Markets work great when they look like neutral auctions, where every bidder knows exactly what they're bidding for, all buyers and sellers have access to the same information about past and present prices, and no single party or group has enough market power to distort aggregate prices. That said, in markets where pricing information is never publicly disclosed and thus never available to anyone even in average/aggregate form, it's not even clear to me that talking about the "price mechanism" -- much less praising it as infallible -- makes sense. And matters are even worse in cases where the market that's hidden within such a "cloud of pricing unknowability" is dedicated to the trading of functional resources whose future function/value will continue to be sensitive to the future choices and non-trading behavior of the original seller (as well as every other potential sell-side market participant). Many of us are still suffering in one way or another from the damage caused by the implosion of the last market like this (i.e., for CDOs, CDSes, and other "interactive" synthetic financial instruments) -- do we really want to see our industry follow that path? FWIW, If there is a consensus that some kind of voluntary resource redistribution mechanism(s) are needed, and that they should provide the means to move resources between parties that are associated with different registries, then I believe that there may be a great deal to be learned from past academic research on resource economics, and from scholars like Milton, and Elinor Ostrom, and many others. IMO it would be prudent to consider a broad range perspectives on how different kinds of common pool resources respond to different kinds of governance regime modifications before contemplating any policy changes that may be difficult or impossible to reconsider after the fact. Speaking for myself alone, TV
participants (11)
-
bmanning＠vacation.karoshi.com -
Chris -
Dmitry Burkov -
Gert Doering -
James Blessing -
Milton L Mueller -
Randy Bush -
Roger Jørgensen -
Sascha Lenz -
Tom Vest -
Wilfried Woeber, UniVie/ACOnet