[ppml] Policy Proposal: Resource Reclamation Incentives

[William Herrin]

On 7/2/07, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> wrote:
> That is a far cry from implementing ARIN policies on an existing holder
> of resources.  I believe the legal term for such an action would be a
> "law of ex post facto".  Correct me if I am wrong, but, I believe there is
> a constitutional prohibition of such things...
>
> [...]
>
> No Bill of Attainder or ex post facto Law shall be passed.

Owen,

That likely isn't relevant. Ex post facto means ARIN can't make a
policy saying, "All holders must now pay dues. All legacy holders must
pay back dues or lose their space." when no policy was previously in
place requiring those dues. It says nothing about whether ARIN must
continue to service the implied contracts legacy holders entered with
Network Solutions those many years ago.

IP addresses are not and have never been understood to be property.
All were assigned under a contract, even before the RIR's implemented
RSAs. Before the RSA's the contract was implied rather than expressed:
give us this form and we agree to provide you with reverse DNS and to
generally discourage anyone else from using the respective addresses.

One thing to remember about contracts is that all contracts end. No
enforceable contract exists in perpetuity. There is always either a
specific end date or a specific way for either side to end it. That's
no less true of implied contracts than it is of written ones.

The lack of specified end conditions for those early contracts does
not mean there are none. Usually a failure to specify end conditions
means that either side can terminate a contract at will.

That being said, ARIN should tread lightly. Consider the following scenario:

ARIN scours its records and composes a list of assigned IP addresses
under its management which have not signed an RSA and for which no
BGP4 route exists in the default-free zone (DFZ).

ARIN posts this list prominantly on its web site and asks any
registrant who wishes to assert that particular addresses on the list
are still in use to fill out a contact update form or lose the
addresses. It also sends email and postal mail to the last known
addresses for each affected registrant.

After 6 months, ARIN ends the registrations and reverse DNS for all
listed blocks which haven't submitted a contact update. They publish a
last-chance list indicating that the blocks will be reassigned in 6
more months if no contact update is received.

Finally, 12 months after the start, ARIN returns the listed legacy
addresses to the assignment pool and begins assigning them. They've
successfully reclaimed all the IPv4 blocks under their management
which are truly defunct.

Does this get ARIN in trouble legally? I'm not a lawyer to say for
sure, but I'm pretty confident ARIN gets through such a scenario
smoothly. I'd also bet that ARIN can get a written opinion from a US
DOC attorney that its okay for them to proceed with such a plan.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin                  herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr.                        Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
Falls Church, VA 22042-3004