Oh, I don't blame the IEEE wholly - but I think that they probably changed tack after realizing that a number of manufacturers were simply not paying the fees t

Oh, I don't blame the IEEE wholly - but I think that they probably changed tack after realizing that a number of manufacturers were simply not paying the fees to actually be assigned a block of OUIs. I view it as kind of a cudgel to be used against vendors, and end-users (read: netops/sysops) are caught in the middle.