RE: IPV4 as a Commodity for Profit

["Buhrmaster, Gary" <gtb () slac stanford edu>]

> ARIN/IANA/whatever should have had the stones to first put a large  
> amount of pressure on the legacy class A holders and then 
> take them to court. Declaring defeat before any action is taken
> is not a reasonable course of action.

Not naming names, but I recall one member of an institution of
higher education stating at a meeting that from their (his?)
perspective, they would give up their class A only if they
calculated that the cost of defending against any potential
lawsuit (which they expected they would win) would exceed
the cost of renumbering (and they had done a back of the
envelope calculation that it was in the millions to renumber).
This is a clear profit and loss point of view.  Why change
voluntarily if there is no profit to be made?  We can all
talk about "the good of the community", but true altruism
is rare (although we all want to see it in others).