[ppml] Policy Proposal 2007-8: Transfer Policy Clarifications

[Owen DeLong]

On Mar 5, 2007, at 7:54 PM, Edward Lewis wrote:

> At 12:15 -0500 3/2/07, Member Services wrote:
>
>> http://www.arin.net/policy/proposals/2007_8.html
>
>> Policy Proposal 2007-8: Transfer Policy Clarifications
>>
>> Author: Paul Andersen
>>
>> Proposal Version: 1.0
>>
>
>> It should be understood that number resources are not "sold" under  
>> ARIN
>> administration. Rather, number resources are assigned to an  
>> organization
>
> What I find a bit confusing is the difference between the thought
> that ARIN "leases" resources versus the thought that a company might
> "sell" resources from one to another.
>
ARIN DOES NOT LEASE RESOURCES.  ARIN DOES NOT SELL RESOURCES.
RESOURCES, in this case, are simply integers of varying lengths (16 
(ASN), 32(ASN/IPv4) or
128 bits(IPv6)).  Actually, ARIN does nothing regarding title to said  
numbers whatsoever
since said numbers are NOT property.  They're just numbers.  Here,  
I'll give
you 10 of them right now:

593, 14, 29, 23094, 120934, 123, 25, 9124, 70192, 138904

What ARIN does is to provide a REGISTRATION SERVICE and a guarantee
that noone cooperating with the ARIN registration service or an  
affiliated
registration service (other RIRs, IANA, etc.) will be registered to  
the same
number in the same number space (ASN, IPv4, and, IPv6 are separate
number spaces).

Assignment is NOT a lease.
> (An off-shoot of this comes from the fee discussion in APNIC, where
> resources whose registration is static see the per-year fees
> decrease.  This reflects the nature of the activity as that of
> managing a registry and not as a "LAN-lord.")
>
While the APNIC fee structure may or may not better reflect the fact
that assignments are not leases and resources do not have title,
merely registration for purposes of maintaining uniqueness, both
ARIN and APNIC assign and allocate resources under that same
principle.


> What exactly does "going out of business" mean?  A company can be
> absorbed by another through a purchase and the brand name tossed away
> while still maintaining the need for the resources.
>
There are many possible events when a company ceases to exist.  The
scenario described above is one.  In other scenarios, the assets (if any
remain) may be sold, auctioned, or otherwise disposed of in payment of
outstanding debts.  The point I believe was being made was that if a
company flat out ceases to exist, i.e. there is no transfer of a  
significant
portion of the physical assets to a single remaining entity, there is no
title in the number resources and the POC cannot go start a new venture
and use the number resources from the previous entity for that purpose.

If the substantial physical network implementing the justified  
utilization
of the number resources is transferred, the ARIN transfer policy should
accommodate the transfer of the number resources to match, regardless
of whether the original organization continues to exist or not.
>>
Owen