[ppml] Incentive to legacy address holders

[Cliff Bedore]

There has been a lot of reference to RFC 2050 for address assignment 
requirements and how we legacy people are under those requirements.  RFC 
2050 was issued in Nov 1996 and superseded RFC 1466 (May of 1993) which 
referenced RFC 1174 (Aug 1990) which appears to be the first to 
officially discuss address assignments.  If you look at 
http://www.bdb.com/~cliffb/bdb_netreg.jpg, you'll see a copy of my 
address assignment which was issued in March of 1990.  Not being funny, 
I don't think any of those RFCs apply to me.  The assignment letter was 
a nice simple document in keeping with the times but there was no 
mention of requirements, usage and rules  regarding revocation, fees etc.

Having said that, I can see benefits to being an ARIN member.  If ARIN 
can develop an RSA that says we'll charge you a nominal non-changing fee 
and not try to take your address space way as long as you continue to 
use it. Further, if ARIN is absorbed or otherwise changed, the agreement 
remains in place unchanged or is rendered null and void and we're back 
to legacy status. ( to avoid ICANN/NetSol problems)  Do I really want to 
spend the money?  Of course not, but I think it would probably be 
reasonable to contribute to the operation of ARIN.  I much prefer the 
way ARIN is run over the DNS debacle.  I feel like I've made a pact with 
the devil every time I have to go through the DNS renewal process.

I've been quite impressed with most of the discussions and attitudes 
here and even though I don't grasp all the nuances of some of the 
arguments, I'm learning  I obviously disagree with those who think ARIN 
should in some way force legacy users to join but strongly agree with 
those who want to invite us to join. I don't think you have a leg to 
stand on to make us join or take the addresses but if you approach us in 
a reasonable manner, I think you'll get a reasonable number to join. 

I'd like to claim I was smart enough to have done this all on my own 
back then but I got some good advice from people at the University of 
Maryland and the DC DEC Unilug so thanks to Mike Petry, Louis Mamakos 
and Fred Avolio.  Their advice and guidance has stood the test of time.

Cliff Bedore
cliffb at cjbsys.bdb.com http://www.bdb.com
Amateur Radio Call Sign W3CB For info on ham radio, http://www.arrl.org/