This thread on Karl Auerbach's CaveBear Blog is important reading. I'm not competent to talk about the technical ramifications of the discussion, but Karl is. And so are the folks at ICANN and IANA. Whatever the merits, it strikes me as the sort of thing that someone ought to be talking about publicly.

Here's a snippet: "In a few days Verisign will remove approximately 15% of the IPv4 address information that the domain name system (DNS) provides when DNS resolvers try to find the set of root servers and the .com and .net top level domains. The apparent motivation is to promote IPv6, which is used by approximately 0% of the community of internet users, at the expense of IPv4, which is used by approximately 100% of the community of internet users."