Software licensing using IPv6 addresses?

[Ignatios Souvatzis]

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 09:24:22PM -0400, William F. Maton Sotomayor wrote:

> b)  I've seen several orgs that use so-called 'virtual libraries', where
>     the content holder strictly enforces IPv4 netblocks used by
>     those orgs to access content.  I have been told there's no reason not
>     to treat IPv6 any different but have yet seen this done in the wild.

IEEE content, for example, can be licensed either individually (using a
password) or to an institutions' netblock(s); costs in the latter case 
depend on number of professional or student users, but not on the number
of addresses used. The blocks are only used to identify the institution.
I understand there are a lot of other electronic editions of magazines  
that use similar schemes and are either licensed to all the universities'
netblocks or to some department's. 

I don't see why this wouldn't work with IPv6 once the content is
delivered via IPv6, too (or instead). Yes, unwarned-of renumbering
would be a problem, but pre-planned one (with a double-usage period)
would work just as well if the right people on the receiving
institutions side. 

Regards,
	-is