RE: Can a customer take IP's with them?

["David Schwartz" <davids () webmaster com>]

> Is this analogy really accurate? In your analogy, the person who
> initially purchases the shrimp actually *owns* the shrimp at that point.
> With IP address space, the ISP does not own the space that it allocates.
> It's really just sub-letting the space already allocated to it.

        Doesn't matter. This issue has nothing to do with ownership. It just has to
do with the ISP continuing to allow their customer to use the IPs. The ISP
certainly has the ability and authority to do that.

> IANAL, but it appears that from a contractual perspective it is clear
> that ARIN retains all 'ownership' rights to the address space. They
> subdivide it to those who are willing to contractually agree to their
> conditions, but the ownership is never transferred. I would think that
> that is an important distinction to make.

        Why? Nobody cares who owns the IPs, just whether or not the ISP allows the
customer to continue using them, which the ISP certainly has the ability to
do.

        DS