[arin-ppml] Legacy Space authority

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net 
> [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On Behalf Of michael.dillon at bt.com
> Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 10:37 AM
> To: ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Legacy Space authority
> 
> 
> > Since they choose to participate in the Registry system, that
> > is the sum total of the Registries authority.
> > 
> > > 
> > > By now it should be clear that we are getting into legal territory
> > 
> > The legal territory is only with regards to the contractual
> > relationships formed by the registries or by the predecessors 
> > or successors in interest.
> 
> In the real world, laws apply to all kinds of social 
> relationships not just those which are based on contracts. In 
> addition, the law's concept of a "contract" may be rather 
> broader than that of a person who has no legal training.
> 
> The point is that we can't figure it out ourselves, and any 
> opinions that we may state on this list really do not play 
> any part whatsoever in the decisions about what happens.

That isn't true.  Legal systems are based on history - for example
who gave the owner of the property that your sitting on right now
authority to own it?  If you are in the United States, a large
chunk of land has property rights based on purchase of it from France,
and France based their right on "right of conquest" when they
took it from the Indians - an action which was almost certainly
a violation of the Indian's legal system (what there was
of it, naturally)  In short, from one point of view your sitting
on illegally owned land.

Here in the US we do not have active hot wars going on over the
Louisiana Purchase, but they most definitely have them going on
in the Mid East with regards to Israel's land ownership.

Eventually one day the allocation of IP addresses is going to be
formalized in a law somewhere in some government - and they will
base that law on the precident that's being created right now by
people doing what they are doing today - and that's being created
partly by "opinions we may state on this list"

> The 
> interpretation of the past is up to the lawyers, and may 
> never be figured out because in two years, anyone who thinks 
> that IPv4 addresses have any value on the public Internet, is 
> going to be considered a crackpot.
> 

The inerpretation of most of the past is never "figured out"
There are only multiple points of view.

There are multiple competing points of view right now, today,
as to what is going on in, for example, the Bush Presidency in
the US - and 20 years from now, there will still be multiple points
of view on what was going on in that administration.

> >From the trial runs done at various IETF/NANOG/ARIN meetings, it
> should be clear to everyone that IPv6 connectivity can be 
> used to provide Internet access with the exception of some minor 
> problem areas which are likely to be fixed within months. In 
> two years, everyone will see that IPv6 is the way forward and 
> there won't be any point in working out these esoteric issues.
> 

People are still running MS-DOS and Windows 98.  Never say never.

> > > where the nuances need to be carefully examined by people who have
> > > special knowledge of such things as "authority".
> > 
> > Unless I missed something, there is pretty skimpy legal
> > history concerning utilization of "non-registry" blessed IP 
> > addresses in whatever manner.
> 
> Lawyers never let the lack of specific history stop them from 
> arguing on a subject. There is plenty of history of other 
> things that might be argued to be analogous to IP address 
> registrations.
> 
> > You cant have your cake and eat it too. If it isnt property,
> > it cant be owned, it can only be governed by contracted 
> relationships.
> 
> Now you are making a legal argument and I am not a lawyer
> so I have no idea if you are speaking the truth, lying
> to me, or simply misinformed. I suspect that a lawyer
> could eloquently argue the point that non-property can
> be owned under some set of circumstances, 

They generally don't make that argument.  They generally redefine
non-property to be property.  Saves a lot of time.

> that contracted 
> relationships are not required, that contracts can be implied 
> or come into being regardless of the actions of the parties 
> involved, etc., etc. Not sure how any of this applies to IP addresses.
> 
> > And what legal recourse would an ARIN customer have when
> > network entities refuse to route those numbers to them? 
> 
> In general, they would only have recourse to sue the network 
> entities which contracted to route numbers to them and then 
> refused to route a specific set of numbers. Of course, anyone 
> can sue anyone and ARIN has already been dragged into court 
> in an IP address ownership dispute. But if we leave grasping 
> at straws out of the equation, I suspect that ARIN can evade 
> legal liability by simply not ordering ISPs to route, or not 
> route, any specific address block. 
> 
> And in all of this, we should be wary of leakage into the
> IPv6 future. If some legal rights regarding IPv4 addresses
> were to be changed from what we have now, then it is likely 
> that the same rules will apply to IPv6 addresses. The IPv6 
> world really does not need to be hampered by outmoded IPv4 problems.
> 

It already is.  The entire IPv6 allocation system is based on how
we do things with IPv4.

One last rock I will toss - you said earlier a soldier on a
battlefield could kill and kill again without breaking laws.
That is also false.  If this soldier is a member of the Catholic
Church he cannot kill without breaking laws. (see 10 commandments)
Also, that soldier is breaking the laws of the government of the people
he is killing, and if he is caught and put into a POW camp by
that government, they can torture him without breaking their
laws.  Just as the US tortured people recently without breaking
US laws.  And, just as the US killed many civilians by dropping
atomic bombs on Japan without breaking laws during WWII.

In short, the question "Is it illegal to kill someone" only has
the right answer of "It depends on your point of view"   With topics
like killing, there's always a legal system somewhere that says
such killing is illegal - even if done by a soldier within the rules
of engagement - so "Of course not" is just as meaningless an answer
as "absolutely yes"  Ultimately, the question comes down to which
legal system do you want to adopt - which is basically what this
entire IPv4 discussion is all about.

Ted