Previous discussion on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24753654
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.
Be dismissive all you want.
Why should IP addresses be private property? Why not simply reclaim unused IP addresses instead, and re-distribute it using the usual mechanism?
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.
Also, they are giving back to the community. The largest grant so far was $1,620,000 to save a radio telescope for the MIT Amateur Radio club.
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.
These did not belong to amateur radio, TAPR, the ARRL or anyone but this organization.
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.
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! :)