[ppml] Counsel statement on Legacy assignments?

[William Herrin]

On 10/5/07, John Curran <jcurran at istaff.org> wrote:
> At 9:00 AM +0900 10/5/07, Randy Bush wrote:
> >if arin does not want to carry out its commitment to the community and
> >to the USG when it was chartered [0], i am sure the community can find
> >an organization more interested in public service.
>
> Intestesting enough, the presentation specifically includes
> commitment to following RFC2050, and RFC2050 states:

John,

Relatively few legacy assignments were made after RFC 2050 was
published. Even if RFC 2050 could be considered "the law" for address
assignments, it couldn't apply retroactively.

Randy's point about replacing ARIN for RDNS is not unsupported by law.
Consider the following scenario:

1. ARIN drops RDNS for legacy registrants.
2. The legacy registrants band together and produce an organization
qualified to handle RNDS delegation.
3. The legacy registrants ask ARIN to transfer the RDNS duty to this
new organization.
4. ARIN refuses.
5. The legacy registrants suffer problems with email and
authentication due to the lack of RDNS.

In this hypothetical scenario, ARIN doesn't just decline to provide
services to legacy holders; they obstruct legacy holders from
receiving the service from anyone else as well. Look up the term
"tortious interference." It would be an interesting case to litigate.


On 10/5/07, michael.dillon at bt.com <michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:
> > [0]  http://rip.psg.com/~randy/970414.fncac.pdf   foil 9
>
> "Randy made a commitment" is not the same as "ARIN made a commitment".

Michael,

This is one record that's part of the whole process which justified
ARIN taking on management of the swamp instead of just managing new
/8's like the other RIRs. For better or for worse, that "Current and
old allocations and their DNS will be maintained with no policy
changes" is a part of ARIN's heritage.

It doesn't create an indefinate legal obligation on ARIN because the
law makes that very difficult to do and this statement doesn't have
the required elements. It does, however, create a moral obligation.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

-- 
William D. Herrin                  herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr.                        Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
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