I assume Amazon came to them and offered the money and they accepted. I don't see anything shady about that. How do you sell something "openly"? Via an auction website? Is that standard procedure for everything these people sell?
Standard Internet procedures for IP addresses is apply to your Regional Internet Registry for addresses, and the panel decides who will make best use of them (usually smaller/newer providers are prioritized). You only pay administrative/membership fees for the addresses because IP addresses are technical bits not property... everyone operates addresses but nobody owns them.
That people sell food and houses is disconcerting in the physical world and creates real problems for real people where some can't afford to eat or have a roof over their head despite a global abundance of resources. That people do the same in the virtual world, with literal numbers, is beyond the scope of comprehension: pure madness.
Just because i don't hold your religious beliefs in regards to private property doesn't mean we can't have a conversation. Of course, if the entire conversation revolves around the legitimacy (or lack thereof) of private property, we'll wander away from the topic that big tech multinationals are eating away the Internet commons. Specifically from Amazon, i'm also referring to the .amazon TLD case.
That organization did not own those addresses. In the most generous interpretation of the situation, they were administrative custodians to the good usage of those addresses.
Reselling them to a for-profit company was definitely not what was intended by anyone and directly contradicts their mission as custodians. Those addresses were that of the global radioamateur community and no one else's.
That's why i made a comparison with .org. ORG TLD was created exclusively by and for non-profits, so it was a scandal when some execs conspired against the general public to resell it and induce more costs for everyone. Likewise, it's a scandal that when you need/want to build DIY radio Internet setup, your addresses which were reserved for that usage don't exist anymore, as they have been appropriated by Amazon.
Please note that this story would be less of a scandal if the community had been consulted on how much of the IP range to sell (retaining some for legit usage), and/or if that money benefited the community and not some greedy capitalist execs, and/or if they had been reattributed through normal channels (RIPE and other RIRs) and not commercialized, none of which is true.
Not exactly a shortage, no. But giving away an entire range without giving ample time (think months/years) for network operators to comply is a bit harsh.
Thanks for the link to their grants. It's good to see they're doing something useful with the money and it's not a case of outright corruption. Although one could argue a club from one of the biggest colleges in the global north may have more suited avenues for funding, i'm glad to see smaller projects in there as well.
To be fair, if the goal was to raise money for the community, would it not have been wiser to rent the IP space, or to setup a proper charitable auction? The IPv4 addresses are bound to go up in value in the coming years, now that major RIRs have given away all the remaining blocks, so that might have brought more revenue.
Looks like the answer you're suggesting is Dr. Hank Magnuski[0]? He seems like an important and impressive fellow, but I'm not sure how that addresses the idea of ownership here.
Most likely we have different understandings of how ownership/stewardship of ipv4 addresses works. My take is "I don't know how it works", but I think the people further up thread believe it's not about ownership, but merely the right to administer on the understanding that it's done for the public good, or something like that.
If you have a concise resource that summarizes how it works that would likely do more to convince us than telling us to research ampr.org.
So, take my words with a grain of salt because i'm not a member of those communities. From reading the previous thread on HN (which i linked in my parent comment), even the people who think the sale is a good thing agree that it was a rather shady deal where it wasn't very clear that a single entity should feel entitled to "own" this IP range.
If you have links with more information going one way or another, historical internet politics is always something i have time for reading, and i think i'm not the only one around here! :)
I have 127.0.0.0/8 for sale! Give me 100 million euros and it's all yours! What do you mean some people are actually using those addresses and i don't own them? RFC makes it very clear local link means my own machine and i pretty much own my own machine, thank you. Do you see how ridiculous is this situation now?
You don't have that for sale, because you don't own it, and if you try to announce it you will get disconnected from all your peers and will have to close shop.
Not that i disagree with your point, but you'd be surprised - if you're not familiar with the ISP world - the crazy routes some operators announce sometimes.
It is my understanding that IP addresses are not owned, indeed. Please correct if wrong.
There are historical IP space who governance is not clear, but for most IP space it's de facto "owned" by RIRs who assign some ranges to their members. According to RIPE assignment policy:
> Assignment of this IP space is valid as long as the criteria for the original assignment are met and only for the duration of the service agreement between yourself and us. We have the right to reassign the address space to another user upon termination of this agreement or an agreed period thereafter.
Internet "ownership" of resources is, or at least was, in my understanding a form of usage-based ownership (as defined by anarchist thinkers). You operate some resources and your ownership is based on that need precisely, despite having to pay some administrative fees (for domain names and IP addresses) to ensure public service infrastructure is maintained properly. Until recently, domain names and IP ranges were not subject to the "laws" of offer and demand, but rather to a first-come-first-served basis. But apart from historical actors (read governments and military industrial complex) who benefit from special rules in order to maintain backwards-compatibility forever, IP space is managed communally through RIRs and no entity exactly owns IP addresses, at least in a private-property based understanding of ownership.
Of course, my claiming to sell 127.* was a joke :)
That's true though. If you're a tier 1 network then you can advertise whatever you want, and if they cut you off on that advertised address, then you can cut your peer's address off. And, if you're big enough, the peers can't just disconnect from you altogether or they themselves would lose connections to other peers. This is why BGP and the other routing protocols are so cool; you can get control of the internet if you just buy some routers and create a way to get advantageous peering relationships. It's an offer you can't refuse.
That's a big if. I don't know where you're from, but here in France the State expropriating smaller landowners in order to achieve huge private-public partnerships (i.e. siphoning off public money right into the pockets of private companies, with little if any benefits for society) is common practice: see for example the ZAD in Notre dame des Landes for an example of popular outcry/resistance, or the expropriations and mafia-like intimidation/aggression for the "Grand Stade de Lyon".
Of course, if you're a big landowner and/or close to the circles of power, you have nothing to worry about.
Can IPv4 even be defined as private property if it is nothing more than a few DDN numbers? I could make a Internet 2 that's totally isolated and restart the whole IP allocation process all over again.
