[ale] Can a class-b space be sold? How much?

[David Ritchie]

On Thu, Mar 18, 2010 at 9:44 AM, Michael Still <stillwaxin at gmail.com> wrote:
> The short answer is yes addresses can be sold, but the long answer is
> no.  Addresses are assigned to entities and those entities are what
> are involved in the transaction, the IP space just goes along with
> them.  You just need to have your company bought by someone else.
> Remember that no individual companies "own" their IP space except that
> "legacy" space is subject to different rules, which you may be a part
> of (not sure really).

I have always wondered why companies that merge (HP comes immediately
to mind from
my own experience/familiarity) are sitting on huge blocks of IPs that
are unused (due to NAT)
when in fact they could have their networks use 10.x.x.x/8 internally
and use public facing addresses for machines that actually need them
only (my guess - less than 1% of machines).
Additionally, they own multiple Class A's if my understanding is
correct (HP is probably
'owning' the old Compaq/Digital/Tandem/EDS address space at this
point.).  It would
give some breathing room for IPV4, but I think the network folks are
simply trying to force the
issue by allowing the address space to run out, forcing a transition to IPV6.

Or am I misreading this? I sometimes think that if this were not
basically a free good, you would have people releasing unused space
back into the pool. What would be the harm
of a $1/year/address IP tax to fund the running of the internet?
Thought experiment here...

Best regards,
Dave Ritchie