[..] some of the actual court filings in the suit and counter-action
against this company Micfo (which perpetrated the big fraud against ARIN)
explicitly used the word "property" with respect to IPv4 address blocks.
Yes, terminally stupid things happen sometimes, but a wise folk doesn't participate in them.
There's a guy in the ENOG community, from Kazakhstan I think, who is now facing actual criminal charges. The story: he obtained an IP block of a defunct LIR through NCC-backed transfer, and the company who owned the defunct LIR before now treats that as robbery because they had no written transfer contract between two parties which would be viewed as legitimate by the Kazakhstanian law — a RIPE NCC transfer obviously is not seen as such, because there's no agreement about those things between Amsterdan and Nursultan — at the time of transfer.
And yes, Kazakhstanian court also thinks IP addresses are property. Do you consider yourself in a good company now?
IP addresses are a public shared resource. They are a *policy*, not a property. Within different networks policies might be different, and you should only care about the policies of a network you're connecting to.
Stating that those are property is really one step away from even more stupid moves, like abandoning RIRs altogether and shifting the policy processes to NIRs instead, because it's governments who are in charge of property distribution control. Which is why, if you really belong to the "property" team, then why would you really participate in the RIR WGs anymore.
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Töma