[ppml] Incentive to legacy address holders

[James Hess]

> The latecomer's aren't paying "extra". The price went up, just like the
> price of property rises in the late stages of development.  The first
> people in take the biggest risks, and get the lowest price.

People, providers, organizations use the address space
they have registered, but they don't own it, they are not like homesteaders;
they don't have any property at all, they are merely tenants of certain
addresses in certain registries.

IANA doesn't own address space (not even the address space reserved
for IANA purposes).
ARIN doesn't own address space.

They assign addresses.
Which is not the same as selling or conferring some form of ownership.

> Second, the Legacy holders have an agreement which ARIN doesn't have a
> right to break or modify. ARIN is the custodian of the records, not the
> owner of the records.

The informal agreement (if any) is not with ARIN, but an organization that
used to exist that no longer does in that form -- IANA is a generic name now,
for whatever organization currently happens to be assigned to perform certain
functions,

So ARIN really has no obligation to uphold an agreement made with
the organization that is not responsible anymore for that aspect of maintaining
the registry.

> It hasn't been a free ride for legacy holders.  The latecomers are the
> ones getting the free ride: using free protocols, free software, and
> free operational experience that the legacy holders developed for them.

Being a legacy holder has nothing to do with developing free software or
developing free protocols.  There are probably plenty of legacy holders who
have made no substantial contribution to the community.

There are plenty of "latecomers" who have developed free software,
free protocols,
and other useful things.

In effect, that a legacy holder "developed" something useful may be true, for
the oldest legacy holders, but I don't see it as a compelling basis
for treating
legacy holders as a class any differently.

If some organizations should get preferential treatment just because they made
X contribution that was useful to the registry members, than the policy should
be formalized and apply to any organization who had done that type of work,
not just a legacy holder, because they happened to need ip addressing a few
years earlier.


> As has been said previously, ARIN is the custodian of records for the
> IANA (DoC).  Even the non-legacy delegations don't belong to ARIN.
> ARIN is just the agent of the IANA. The legacy holders have pre-existing
> agreements with the IANA. ARIN has no standing and no justification to
> interfere with those prior agreements.

Saying it over and over again doesn't make it the case.

The organization that is now called IANA does not own the delegations;
IANA is the mere technical custodian in this picture, not ARIN.
ARIN is not an agent of IANA.

IANA is subordinate to ICANN.

If you examine the IANA web site, you will note of particular interest
the "IANA-Related Issue Escalation Procedure," in case of IANA-related
issues, and the
final escalations if an issue remains unresolved are to ICANN staff.

I.E. The ICANN President and CEO have oversight over the
IANA general manager.


> The true purpose of this proposal is not outreach, nor identification of
> abandoned delegations. Those purposes could be carried out by a
> newsletter, and those purposes are also not unique to Legacy blocks, but
> are relevant to all blocks.  So, when the legitimate purposes are
> completely and better served by alternate means, what does that mean for
> the purpose of this proposal?

One legitimate purpose is equal treatment of all the organizations whose
records are being maintained by the RIR, by getting them in the same
fair policy framework.

I also don't agree with the supposition that the proposal is not about
outreach or
identification of abandoned delegations.

If you have a better way that does all these things, then propose it..

--
-J