well what i've heard is that it what we in business call the old screw up. they forgot the law while they were handing out address space. cerf explained it very well. they are powerless to do anything. i can see a IPv4 union of users coming together. his exact words were "The problem with trying to reclaim (re-possess) IP address space is enforcement. One has to find a way to stop someone from "advertising" the assigned address space in the global routing tables before one can effectively re-use the address space. Unless the party cooperates by ceasing to advertise the space, assigning it to another party who advertises this address space will cause inconsistent routing to one or the other of the advertising networks." I can see alot of opportunities here if push comes to shove. Incidentally rfc 1918 is irrelevant to it - those are internal border addresses - non public "Address Allocation for Private Internets". Unless I'm missing something it's the public address network. Cheers Joe Baptista -- Planet Communications & Computing Facility a division of The dot.GOD Registry, Limited On Mon, 23 Sep 2002 Valdis.Kletnieks@vt.edu wrote: > On Sun, 22 Sep 2002 04:13:17 EDT, Joe Baptista <baptista@dot-god.com> said: > > "David Conrad recently reminded legal participant of telecom conferences > > that Ipv4 address space remains yours even if you don't pay the registry > > fees. Conrad a registry insider at ARIN admitted people don't have to > > return address space if they don't pay their fees." > > > > Can anyone tell me why this is the case? > > Well... I go down to the local rental store, and if I rent a post hole > digger or a chain saw or similar, I need to return it before the next > people can use it. > > If I forget to return the stuff I rented from Rent-An-Integer (aka ARIN), > they don't need to get my integers back before they can give them out again > to somebody who's not a deadbeat. > > Of course, at that point, you basically have RFC1918-style space with > a nonstandard prefix, and are quite likely to be hassled by the current > renter of that series of integers if you persist in using them on the > open Internet. > > Remember - you're not paying for address space. You're paying for a guarantee > that you're the only user of that address space. If you don't understand the > distinction, you might want to stash that article and re-write it once you do. > -- > Valdis Kletnieks > Computer Systems Senior Engineer > Virginia Tech > >