IP addresses are clearly quite valuable, especially PI ones, not to mention the "allocated unspecified" ones, for obvious reasons. However, the community should definately do everything in it's power to make sure IP addresses are not, under any circumstances, sold.

We should also note that any value which may be attached to IPv4 addresses today will likely be significantly diluted as IPv6 is more widely deployed. Anyone who thinks that they will gain some advantage by paying for IPv4 addresses will be greatly disappointed when that advantage evaporates because of IPv6. Scarcity often increases the value of something so we should be quite clear that IPv6 addresses will be so abundant that any intrinsic scarcity value in IP addresses will disappear. I think that this point is important enough to be incorporated in a document regarding IPv4 addresses as a warning. There are already commercial IPv6 services available in Europe as well as several production networks used internally by research and development consortia. There is no doubt that IPv6 has matured and that the growth in the deployment of IPv6 will continue. All of this tends to reduce the pressure on the IPv4 address space and therefore reduces any intrinsic value of an IPv4 address. --Michael Dillon