These articles are slightly misleading. The blocks have been assigned to <i>ISPs</i>, not to <i>Users</i>. There is a still a modestly large (albeit shrinking) pool of IPv4 addresses available for end-user use. I still don't anticipate actual scarcity of IPv4 address space for another few years, though it sucks if you try to start an ISP in that time, as you likely wouldn't be abel to get any IPv4 address space allocated to you.
<a href="http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-address-space.xml" rel="nofollow">http://www.iana.org/assignments/ipv4-address-space/ipv4-addr...</a><p>How long before one of the companies sitting on "legacy class A" IP space sells them off? Are any of them doing this already?