[ppml] Proposed Policy: Bulk WHOIS agreement expiration clarification

[Member Services]

ARIN received the following policy proposal. In accordance with the ARIN
Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process, the proposal is being
posted to the ARIN Public Policy Mailing List (PPML) and being placed on
ARIN's website.

The ARIN Advisory Council (AC) will review this proposal and may decide to:
    1. Accept the proposal as a formal policy proposal as it is presented;
    2. Work with the author to:
        a) clarify the language or intent of the proposal;
        b) divide the proposal into two (2) or more proposals; or
        c) combine the proposal with other proposals; or,
    3. Not accept the proposal as a formal policy proposal.

The AC review will be conducted at the next regularly scheduled meeting
of the AC that occurs after the proposal is posted to PPML.

Since this proposal was received within 10 days of the next scheduled
meeting of the ARIN Advisory Council, the review period will be extended
to the regularly scheduled meeting that occurs after the upcoming meeting.

This proposal will not be on the agenda for the upcoming ARIN XVII
Public Policy Meeting.

If the AC accepts the proposal or reaches an agreement with the author,
then the proposal will be posted as a formal policy proposal to PPML and
it will be presented at a Public Policy Meeting. If the AC does not
accept the proposal or can not reach an agreement with the author, then
the AC will notify the community of their decision with an explanation;
at that time the author may elect to use the petition process to advance
their proposal. If the author elects not to petition or the petition
fails, then the proposal will be considered closed.

The ARIN Internet Resource Policy Evaluation Process can be found at:
http://www.arin.net/policy/irpep.html

Mailing list subscription information can be found at:
http://www.arin.net/mailing_lists/index.html

Regards,

Member Services
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)


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Policy Proposal Name: Bulk WHOIS agreement expiration clarification

Author: Bill Woodcock

Proposal Version: 1.0

Proposal type: Modify

Policy term: Permanent

Policy statement:

Text added to the end of "3.1. Bulk Copies of ARIN's WHOIS":

If no term of validity or expiration date is included in the policy or
AUP, it shall be deemed valid upon acceptance by ARIN and shall conclude
after thirty days notice by ARIN, immediately upon cancellation by the
other signatory, or immediately upon a violation of its terms. If an
expiration date is included, ARIN shall provide thirty days notice prior
to the expiration of an AUP agreement, in order that the data recipient
shall have the opportunity to receive uninterrupted service.

Rationale:

Presently, there is no expiration date specified in either the AUP
agreement nor in the policy. ARIN whois data recipients receive an FTP
login to an ARIN server, which unexpectedly stops working one day,
breaking lots of scripts, causing gaps in datasets, and causing people
to waste a lot of time debugging, only to find that the login has been
deactivated with no forewarning.  If ARIN staff are going to arbitrarily
decide to "expire" an agreement which has no defined expiration, doing
so unilaterally and without notice is an extraordinarily bad idea.

Let me just say that I think it's really pitiful that we should need to
use the policy process to micromanage operations at this level. But
believe me, I wouldn't be wasting my time writing something this trivial
if it weren't necessary to solve an actual problem.

Timetable for implementation: Immediate.

Meeting presenter: Bill Woodcock