[arin-discuss] Legacy RSA from arin-announce question

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net
>[mailto:arin-discuss-bounces at arin.net]On Behalf Of jlewis at atlantic.net
>Sent: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 1:58 PM
>To: Tuc at T-B-O-H.NET
>Cc: arin-discuss at arin.net
>Subject: Re: [arin-discuss] Legacy RSA from arin-announce question
>
>
>On Tue, 23 Oct 2007, Tuc at T-B-O-H.NET wrote:
>
>> 	I took an informal survey of some of the people that had
>> been granted Legacy space... Some IPs weren't currently routed.
>> Some emails bounced. Some had no idea what/who ARIN was. Some
>> were in their own little world and aren't on NANOG, ARIN lists,
>> ISP-* lists, etc. One had moved twice and never updated his contact
>> information.
>
>Even better, what happens to legacy allocations when the person to whom
>the space was allocated had died, but the space continues to be routed?

Most dead people I've ever known are really terrible at paying bills,
I think that's why they call them deadbeats...

I assume that the ISP that is doing the routing is billing the dead
guy, and eventually is going to figure it out and disconnect him.

Otherwise, please tell me this ISP's name so I can get free service too...

>I'm familiar with one case of this, and I don't doubt there are many more.
>
>Is it worth trying to reclaim these small IP blocks?...perhaps just to get
>them out of the global routing table?  Does anyone have the authority to
>do so?

Your simply asking if the RIR's have authority to revoke legacy assignments
in a different way, and we have already been discussing/arguing about that
for months if not years.

>When Internic used to hand out PI to anyone who asked properly,
>was there any time limit on assignments...or is space assigned to an
>individual to be passed on as property to their heirs?

If the space was assigned to a corporate entity then as corporations
have a legal existence that is separate from a person (and cannot die of
biological causes like a person) as long as the corporation continues
to exist, the assignment is unchanged by the death of a member of that
corporation, whether or not the corporation is willed to an heir.

If the space was assigned to a person, the original agreement (whether
written down or implied) was with that person - and when that person
ceases to exist, the agreement becomes void.

That's why, for example, that if I owe a lot of money to a bank and
die of heart failure, and if my estate then becomes exhausted
paying the bank claims and there's still money owing, the bank cannot
come after my children and claim that my contract with the bank is now
my childrens responsibility because it was part of the estate, etc.

Of course, in practice if an heir merely contacted ARIN and updated
contact information, it would not be easy for an outsider to figure
out that the heir now had no contractual rights to the numbering.  Once
more, though, this gets into the argument of whether ARIN is legally
obligated to contracts that it's predicessor may have issued on numbering
assignments.  If ARIN isn't obligated, the issue is moot as ARIN can
simply declare the current Legacy holder to have no legal right to
the assignment without signing an RSA.  If ARIN -is-
obligated, then if the current contact on PI space could not produce
documentation that they were the same person who was originally listed on
the original numbering contract, they would have no legal right to
the legacy numbers.

I wonder if John Postel had any PI space issued to himself? ;-)

Ted