[ppml] ARIN member in good standing?

[Michael.Dillon at btradianz.com]

> What happens when ARIN can no longer contact them or if they have 
decided 
> to cut contact with ARIN?

Now you are asking a more general question unrelated
to 2006-2. If ARIN issues AS numbers or IP addresses
to an organization and that organization ceases to
pay ARIN subscription fees then that organization is
failing to fulfil its social contract with the ARIN
community. Many organizations which are run by members
have the concept of "member in good standing" and when
a member ceases to be in good standing, either by failing
to pay fees or for some other reason, the organization
removes membership benefits and eventual unilateraly
discharges the member.

Does the ARIN RSA make this social contract into
a legal contract? If not, then should it?

Quite frankly, I don't have the answers but I think
that before we can deal with the issue of organizations
losing contact, we need to be clear on what is the
social contract between individual numbering resource
users and the community of numbering resource users. 
I think ARIN fairly represents the community and therefore
if any social contract is cast into a legal contract,
ARIN should be the legal representative of the community.
But I don't believe that we have openly discussed this
issue in terms of a social contract before. Many people
believe that the recipient of numbering resources also
acquires some obligations along with them, but we have
not expressed this in a general and comprehensive way
before.

Today, the unspoken social contract is enforced in secret
largely because organizations know that they will likely
have to return to ARIN for numbering resources multiple 
times. After the migration to IPv6, most organizations
will not need additional numbering resources from ARIN and
unless the unspoken social contract becomes embodied in
legal contracts and written ARIN policies, there will be
no incentive to meet the obligations of the contract.

--Michael Dillon