There are usage requirements for IP addresses now. I have to substantiate the allocation.

I think if ARIN wanted to, they could give everyone a year to "substantiate their allocation" and set the policy something like "companies must return for reallocation any overallocations."

The risk of not returning an overallocation, well I'm not sure. ARIN certainly has teeth, and companies should simply be expected to correct these huge overallocations.

Just like the open source community comes together to solve serious problems, if we as a community enforced an ethical standard and some key people stood up raised this as an issue, I'm willing to bet ARIN could replenish a stockpile of IPv4 space.

So the question I'm asking is, since ARIN is empty, clearly they aren't interested in keeping a stockpile of addresses. Why not? I guess the more generous alternative is simply they have failed spectacularly at their stated goal.

I admit that I am not familiar with ARIN, but if it is anything like APNIC (Asia Pacific) then those big Class A Allocations are protected as legacy allocations. As such they are not required to give the legacy allocations up and its questionable if the RIR could even revoke them.

ARIN can go over the pool of post 1997 addresses they have allocated, but I think you would find much smaller unallocated blocks.

Take back those four and you can delay the v4 armageddon by about three months. Longer if you still apply the extra-strict rules used during the armageddon runup.

When the three months are up you can go looking for four more companies, and hire some more lawyers too.