[arin-ppml] Curious about consensus

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Tue, Apr 26, 2011 at 09:38:50AM -0400, Milton L Mueller wrote:
> Can you explain to me how 2008-2 would have allowed ARIN to handle the MSFT-Nortel deal any differently? The basic problem, which some of us tried to warn you about, is simply that ARIN has no authority over legacy holders who haven't signed an (L)RSA, and legacy holders have few if any incentives to sign one. No amount of fiddling with the language of the policy alters that. 

2008-2 required a transferor to sign an RSA or LRSA _before_ they
could release the block to ARIN for transfer.  The presumption is
that the receiver wanted a legitimate, recognized by ARIN block and
thus the transferor had incentive to sign an RSA or LRSA first.
This also completed the contract triangle if you were, should any
of this end up in some sort of dispute there were contracts in
place.

In the case of someone transfering away all their resources it was
felt this was a low burden. They would sign an LRSA that covered
the resources and then sign a transfer agreement, so they would be
under LRSA with the transferor for all of 5 seconds.  There was
little reason to object, and it gave ARIN firm contractual ground.

There was also a related issue.  In the case of someone who was
transfering only part of a block, it also provided a carrot to bring
more space into the fold.  They would have to sign an LRSA for the
entire block, then transfer away part of it.  This left the space
they retained also under an LRSA, reducing the pool of contractless
blocks.  Note, this requirement need not be there to have the
previous one, but many folks thought it was a good idea.

Basically there's a carrot in this case, the transferor wants to
be able to get money from the buyer, and the buyer wants a legitimate
product so they have incentive to sign.

That said, I don't think we ever talked about the situation where
the transferor might be in bankruptcy or a similar situation.  I
am not a laywer, and have no experience with bankrupticy courts on
such matters.  I don't know if such a requirement would have been
no big deal in that process, or if requiring a LRSA to be signed
first would have gummed up the entire works.

I think though that most transferors are not going to be in bankruptcy,
so I am not too concerned if those get special cased by ARIN as in
this situation.  I am concerned that we have a carrot here to get
legacy owners more involved with the process and we're not using
it for transfers from ordinary companies.

I'm curious what ARIN is going to do if a regular company comes along to
transfer resources and refuses to sign an LRSA or RSA.  Right now the
policy doesn't require it, but to do business (of any kind) without a
contract is to me foolish.  I suppose there could be some sort of "one
time transfer agreement" drawn up to cover the transaction, but I don't
think that exists yet.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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