[address-policy-wg] Policy proposal 2007-08 will go to Last Call

The RIPE Address Policy Working Group chairs have decided to move policy 
proposal 2007-08 to Last Call. This policy proposal has been discussed 
on the mailing list since 23 October 2007. Version 2 of this proposal 
was published on 18 March 2008, and version 3 has been published on 18 
September 2008. In the last review phase version 3 of this proposal was 
discussed. Each version used the feedback on the previous version from 
the community. Most of the objections to version 2 of the proposal have 
been handled in version 3. There were three remaining objections after 
version 3 was published:

1) This policy will give IPv4 addresses financial value
This subject has been discussed on the mailing list. The feeling was 
that IPv4 addresses already have financial value, but there was no proof 
for this. Remco van Mook has demonstrated that there are organizations 
that will pay money for IPv4 addresses, which proves that the financial 
value already exists.

2) There will be no market for IPv4 address
In the same presentation Remco van Mook has shown that there are 
currently both sellers and buyers for IPv4 addresses, which proves the 
existence of such a market.

3)  Reclaim/reuse is more efficient than transfering
Alex Le Heux from RIPE NCC has provided statistics on the amount of IPv4 
addresses that have been reclaimed. These statistics show that the 
amount of addresses that are effectively reclaimed (instead of returned 
to the NCC in exchange for a bigger allocation) is negligible.

The current version of this proposal is version 4, which only has a 
minor change to close a potential loophole in version 3: "An LIR may 
only receive a transferred allocation after their need is evaluated by 
the RIPE NCC" is changed to "An LIR may only receive a transferred 
allocation after their need is evaluated and approved by the RIPE NCC". 
Because the change is so small, we have chosen not to go to the Review 
phase again.

Because all objections to this proposal have been handled and because of 
the strong support that has been shown we feel confident that we can 
declare consensus and move this proposal to Last Call.

Sander Steffann
Address Policy Working Group co-chair