[ppml] Posting of Legacy RSA and FAQ

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: Owen DeLong [mailto:owen at delong.com]
>Sent: Monday, October 15, 2007 1:36 PM
>To: Ted Mittelstaedt
>Cc: Randy Bush; John Curran; dean at av8.com; Public Policy Mailing List
>Subject: Re: [ppml] Posting of Legacy RSA and FAQ
>
>
>Did I miss an election where Ted was appointed spokesperson for the
>entire
>non-legacy community?
>
>Ted, I really don't think you have any right to speak for all of us,

I'm not taking it upon myself to act as spokesperson.  Sorry you cannot
argue against what I'm saying using that cheap excuse.

I am telling those folks what is going to happen.  They know I'm right
and I think you know I'm right as well.  To put it another way that may
be more understandable as to where I'm coming from:  certain things
are happening right now with regards to the legacy holders.  Certain things
are going to happen in the future.  The results of that are going to make
some choices disappear.

These are political issues, not technical issues.  Sure, from a technical
standpoint, anything is possible.  Technically, legacy holders could indeed
be offered a succession of RSA's, one after another, until all of them sign.
But, politically it won't happen.  Trust me on this.  It won't.  Any more
than
the Republicans in the current US election are going to field a credible
candidate.  It isn't possible from a political standpoint.

The fundamental point I made was that the legacy holders are being asked
by the rest of the community to participate, sign an RSA, come in from
out of the cold.  The community is, right now, bending over backwards to
accomodate them, and asking them to work and participate with the community
to make the coming-in-from-the-cold transition as easy as possible.

For a legacy holder to turn it's back on the current effort is politically
unwise.  It is, in fact, political suicide.  Because what will happen is
that as I mentioned, once the current outreach effort is concluded and
a large number of legacy holders have in fact, come in out of the cold,
have signed a "legacy RSA" why then what will happen is that the remaining
ones who have refused to come in now, will be out in the cold, and will have
no sympathy from anyone.  They won't have sympathy from the non-legacy
community because we have already extended the olive branch and had it
refused.  And they will have even less sympathy from the Legacy holders who
have taken that olive branch, signed a Legacy RSA, and will be telling the
rest of us "The legacy RSA was good enough for me to sign, it's good enough
for those bozos to sign"

I'm sorry you didn't like how I phrased this the first time around.  Maybe
you will like it more this time around.  I'm honestly not telling anyone
anything they don't already know in the back of their mind.  And I'm not
telling anyone who studies politics anything that they haven't already
seen before.

>and, I, for
>one complete disagree with much of what you have said.

I personally don't agree 100% with it either.  For example I think it would
be very bad for ARIN to have to vacate the US to remove itself from US
court jurisdiction.  But, if the remaining Legacy holders who want to
litigate and refuse to work out an acceptable RSA now, follow through
with litigation, and by some miracle manage to find some backwards court
in the US to rule in their favor, why then you and I know that ARIN isn't
going to have any choice but to leave the US.  The rest of the world won't
stand for the US trying to litigate IP address assignments, you know that.

>I think your
>tone
>is unnecessarily antagonistic, much as I think this is true of Dean and
>Randy as well.
>

Well, that's your opinion.  I thought my tone wasn't antagonistic enough.
Dean and Randy and others like them aren't going to understand that they
cannot go against the rest of the world and win, until they try it and
suffer contusions.  But, some of the folks that they are leading around by
the nose may come to their senses after reading my statement and decide
it is in their best interest to work with the system rather than fighting
it.

For any Legacy holder that has sense, they will understand that right now
they have the greatest amount of influence with ARIN and with setting
policy.
In my opinion the non-Legacy community is so desperate to get the Legacy
holders under an RSA that they will give away the farm, the Legacy holders
can practically write their own RSA right now.  If they have sense, they
will get with ARIN and do so.

But if they don't, they will foolishly wait and then end up losing whatever
influence they could have gotten freely given, and will have to fight tooth
and nail later on.  This is a fact.  It is not a technical fact, but it
is politically, a fact.  And, I apologize to any and everyone that is
uncomfortable with it, but I am merely relating what has happened thousands
of times before in these kinds of scenarios.

Ted