[ppml] Policy Proposal: Resource Reclamation Incentives

[Owen DeLong]

On Jul 2, 2007, at 11:00 AM, <michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:

>> There already _is_ a special class: legacy holders.  Counsel
>> has indicated that all we can do is incent such folks into
>> becoming part of the normal class, not force them into
>> compliance, and this proposal attempts to use one of the few
>> carrots ARIN has at its disposal.
>
> Who said anything about forcing them?
>
In my mind, you did.

> In my view, there is *NO* special class of address holders. Those  
> legacy
> holders are not a special class, they are either ignorant of the rules
> or they are blatantly flouting the rules. In either case, they are  
> *NOT*
> a special class and have no special rights. If it ever came to it  
> in the
> courts, the likelihood is that the courts will once again rule that
> legacy address holders must comply with the ARIN rules and policies
> which all other address holders comply with.
>
Um, not exactly.  They are NOT SUBJECT to the rules.  They have no
contractual relationship with the RIRs and no reason to believe they
need one.  The courts have never ruled that.  I don't know what makes
you think they would rule that way again given that they never have.

Steve Ryan has stated that we don't likely have any such case against
legacy address holders and that we would likely loose.  When it comes
to a legal opinion on this subject, I tend to believe Steve before I  
would
believe you.
> The playing field must be made as level as we can without  
> extraordinary
> effort. That's why we don't actively take legacy holders to court and
> try to force them to sign the RSA and pay their fare share of the  
> fees.

Actually, I believe the reasons are:
	1.	There isn't enough money in the fees to justify the effort.
	2.	We wouldn't be likely to win even if we did (at least according
		to Steve Ryan).
	3.	It would be very expensive and time consuming.
	4.	It would also probably create some fairly massive publicity
		that would be negative to both sides.

> To do that would be extraordinary effort. But at the same time we must
> not in any way actively provide benefits to those who flout the rules
> and leech off the rest of us. If these organizations are going to
> continue to flout the rules, I would rather leave them in exactly the
> same state they are today, not provide the benefit of an aggregate
> allocation.
>
I hate to break it to you, but, existing policy provides that benefit  
already.
This proposal doesn't seek to change that fact.  Instead, it seeks to  
provide
them some benefit and encouragement to RETURN addresses which
will benefit the community.  Please try to look at the issues the policy
attempts to address instead of continuing down this rathole of other
existing policies that are already on the books.  Please re-read the
existing NRPM 4.6 and 4.7 and then let's discuss this in terms of the
changes being proposed instead of how much you dislike what is
already on the books.

> Also, note that an organization must exert considerable effort to
> renumber into a new allocation, and the only real reason to do that is
> to be a good network citizen. But if they want to be a good network
> citizen, then they can simply sign the RSA, start paying membership
> fees, and turn back any extra addresses that they may have. This is  
> all
> possible today with no change in policy.
>
True, but, obviously, there are reasons it's not happening.  I know that
there are legacy holders with contiguous chunks of unused address
space.  I believe that this policy would facilitate them returning more
space than current policy. As such, I think this policy would put us in
a better place than we are today.  I agree it is not a complete  
solution,
but, my measure of good policy change is "Does it put us in a better
place than we are today?", rather than "Does it solve all problems in
one fell swoop?"

Owen