[arin-ppml] ARIN releases new version of the Legacy Registration

[John Curran]

On Sep 7, 2008, at 9:46 AM, Cliff Bedore wrote:
>
> I'm curious about why the sudden interest in "outreach/reclamation" of
> Legacy addresses.  We made it 10 years or so without it.

At present, we've got a fairly rational Internet community
which is concerned about the future but still capable of
informed discourse and self-governance.

It's been noted that the relationship/rights/responsibilities
of those address holders who received their space long ago is
not well documented or even generally agreed upon in some cases.
Any documents which do exist are rather sparse on many topics,
including governing policy, applicable low, forum for redress,
etc.

One of the benefits of the Legacy RSA is to try and enshrine
the current situation under a contract which would be both
recognized and provide protection of the status quo to the
extent possible.  To the extent that there is a conflict
between the Legacy RSA and future policies, the LRSA takes
precedence.

There is no particular financial need for the Legacy RSA;
the fees which are set are (as Lee pointed out) minimal
compared to ARIN's overall budget, and were simply set to
provide a level of parity with respect to existing address
space holders and their maintenance fees.

So, if there's no urgent need for the LRSA, why have go
through the work of offering it at all?  My personal
answer is simple:  in several years, it is quite likely
that many more parties other than ARIN will have strong
interest in IPv4 assignments and their pedigree.  While
we cannot predict what other parties might decide that
they need to get involved (e.g. governments, regulators,
multinational policy bodies), there's nearly universal
respect for contracts between parties, such as the LRSA
provides to those holding legacy address space. If having
forthright documentation of your use of the address space
and receipt of association services isn't of value to an
organization, then it should proceed as it has been doing.

/John