[ppml] Policy Proposal 2007-15: Authentication of LegacyResources

[michael.dillon at bt.com]

> Mutual consideration.  The requester obtains address space 
> they can use, that part is clear.  What of value goes in the 
> other direction.
> It surely wasn't money in the early days. 

My understanding is that "consideration" means money, or something that
has monetary value such as shares, gold, a car with resale value. If
there was no consideration, then there is no contract.

This is the reason why, during World War II, a large number of
businessmen offered their services to the government for a dollar a day.
The payment was required in order to have an enforceable contract with
these dollar-a-day men.

This is why I don't believe that legacy holders have any right to the
addresses which they hold unless they can meet ARIN's current rules for
justification of address space. And as we get closer to the IPv4
exhaustion point, this will become very important. 

Imagine that ARIN denies a new allocation to a member who has complied
with ARIN rules for years. The request is denied because ARIN has just
run out of addresses. However, there are still many legacy blocks whose
holders have never justified their use. The disgruntled ARIN member
decides to sue ARIN and points out to the courts that ARIN is materially
damaging their business and is refusing to allocate address blocks which
have never been reviewed and justified with ARIN. I suspect that the
courts will side, more or less, with the member who has worked with the
rules over many years, and against the legacy holder who has never shown
any justification for holding their allocation.

--Michael Dillon