[arin-ppml] Creating a market for IPv4 address space inabsenceof routing table entry market

[Owen DeLong]

On Jun 18, 2008, at 1:40 PM, David Schwartz wrote:

>
>> Yes, if you still feel it necessary, you may quote me in public.
>>
>> However, my intent was to point out that ARIN is not conveying
>> any rights.  I made no statement about what rights may or may
>> not exist.  I merely stated that ARIN does exactly this:
>>
>> ARIN guarantees you that ARIN will not issue the same addresses
>> to another party while you maintain your account in good standing
>> with ARIN and your resources have not been reclaimed for other
>> reasons.
>>
>> You are also reasonably assured that the other RIRs and the IANA
>> will not issue the same addresses to someone else.
>>
>> This does not convey any rights with respect to the internet or any
>> organization outside of ARIN.  It's just a contract between you
>> and ARIN.  Nothing more.
>>
>> The fact that most (if not all) ISPs agree and cooperate with ARIN
>> and the other RIRs as authoritative registries for uniqueness
>> is what makes the internet possible and keeps it working.  However,
>> if ISPs choose to believe someone else besides ARIN and let them
>> route addresses ARIN assigned to you, there's not really any
>> right on the part of ARIN to do anything about that.  Nor will
>> any government likely listen to you about ARIN having conveyed
>> such a right to you.
>
> This may be a convenient legal fiction, but to actually believe  
> this, you
> would have to believe that ARIN is not responsible for the predictable
> consequences of its actions based on other people's rational  
> actions. ARIN
> knows that its unique delegations are the gateways to Internet  
> routability,
> and that this is so for good and rational reasons. It makes its  
> decisions
> with this knowledge and cannot say it is not responsible for the  
> results
> because it does not directly control those gateways.
>
What you are saying does not disagree with my point.  I am not talking
about ARIN's responsibilities.  I am talking about what, if any, rights
are conveyed with an IP address assignment from ARIN.  ARIN doesn't
have any rights to control people who run routers, and, IP addresses
delegated by ARIN don't  come with any such rights, either.

I'm not saying ARIN isn't responsible for making sure that what they
issue is proper.  I'm saying ARIN has no ability to enforce what
some other ISP does with the data.  ARIN can't control if Verizon
chooses to route some random address to one of their customers
instead of to the organization that ARIN issued the addresses to.
There's simply no way ARIN can do anything about this.

> This would be like a credit-reporting agency saying that it has no
> responsibility for denials of credit rationally made on the basis of  
> its
> ratings because it wasn't the entity that denied the credit.
>
No... What I'm talking about would be more like saying that a credit-
reporting agency isn't responsible if MC issues a card number
to someone and VISA issues the same card number to someone
else.

(Yes, I know that V starts with 4 and MC starts with 5 exactly
to avoid this, but, it's the closest I could come using the
analogy presented.)

The reality is that if VISA and MC do create such a numbering
conflict, the credit reporting agency really can't do much about
it.  I don't know what level of authority is granted to the numbering
authority for PCI stuff, so, let's just accept that the analogy doesn't
fit if you over-analyze it and move on.

Owen