Paul Vixie (currently serving on the ARIN board of trustees) presents an article in the journal of the Association for Computer Machinery his thoughts comparing the idea of multiple DNS roots with the concept of multiple whois registries for IP addresses.

Any proposal for a competing Whois registry model is as doomed by design and destiny as every alternative DNS system. Even if it succeeds at first, it would fail after copycatting occurred. Participants in RIR public policy development would do well to remember this when evaluating dire warnings of RIR Whois irrelevancy because of an RIR transfer regime having a requirement of near-term demonstrated operational need.

http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2008216

UPDATE:

Milton Mueller of the Internet Governance Project provides his thoughts in contrast.

http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/8/15/4877516.html

ARIN announced today that the transfer of IPv4 address space from the Nortel bankruptcy case was completed with Microsoft completing the “needs based” transfer requirement according to the existing ARIN policies.  Microsoft also signed a registration services agreement for this address space.

https://www.arin.net/about_us/media/releases/20110415.html

Court Approves Nortel’s Sale of IPv4 Addresses to Microsoft

IPv4 addresses no property Canada wieghs in on Nortel/Microsoft sale