🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <Pine.BSF.3.95.980330165653.27876A-100000@mercury.mcs.net>,
Michael Walden  <walden@Mercury.mcs.net> wrote:
>> You only need to pay the fees if you come BACK for allocation during
>> that year.  If you are stable, and not asking for more space, you do not
>> need to signup for these fees.
>> 
>> That is, the fees are actually one-time.  If you do not need to request more
>> space in a given year, you do not need to pay that fee, because you are not
>> using the allocation service.
>> 
>> They are quoted as "$/year" because it is presumed that you will be using
>> them in a given year.
>> 
>> Now, given that you would pay, for example, 8 cents to have the address
>> allocated ONCE, what is this crap about charging someone $5/month for it?
>> 
>> That's quite a margin, is it not?
>> 
>
>I agree that it is absolutely lame for an ISP to charge for ip addresses.
>Now I read what you said about the IP space and if that is the case then
>the ARIN webpage is completely misleading. Now I also attended the ARIN
>members meeting two weeks ago and that charge per year was also the
>impression that I got. However, the Arin meeting was so arcane that anyone
>could have gotten the wrong impression. Sorry to see you weren't there but
>Kim said that you did not attend these things. :)

Well, Kim is full of shit.  She is well aware of why I was not there - they
booked it for a day which was just flat-out impossible for me to make, and
knew that to be the case at the time.

That's ok - they have to book things like this for the greatest convenience,
not for mine, and I accept that.  But to say that "I don't attend these
things" is a bald-faced lie, especially when Kim and I had distinct
conversations on this very point.

The charge IS per year - if you use the allocation services.  If you 
don't, then it isn't (that is, you pay in any year you use the allocation
services).  That charge is SEPARATE from membership, which is cheap 
(a couple of thousand a year), which gets you the representation (very
important indeed).

ARIN has claimed all along that what you're paying for is the allocation
service and the work associated with it - NOT the space, as they consider
the IP space itself to have no tangible value (and thus, it can't be sold,
since it isn't owned).  In fact, their BOT has recently restated that on a 
public mailing list.  

If that's not REALLY what they're doing then I would predict that when the
truth surfaces and is documented you'll see the BOT and AC flee like rats
off the Titanic - the legal problems surrounding anti-competitive activity
related to a *critical* resource are too numerous to mention.

I still have a serious problem with the fee structure - it is my position
that any fee structure in excess of direct and verifyable costs is likely
akin to a tax -- without the authority to levy same.

--
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Karl Denninger (karl@MCS.Net)| MCSNet - Serving Chicagoland and Wisconsin
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