[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: IPv4 Recovery Fund - Revised

[Leo Bicknell]

In a message written on Tue, Jan 20, 2009 at 10:56:03AM -0500, Wettling, Fred wrote:
> I believe the common interpretation of the policy, if/when compensation
> is offered to the resource holder, will be that of a sale.  CFOs,
> Controllers, or others responsible for the financial well-being of their
> organization, will book the money received from ARIN as revenue on their
> income statements.

This a key point of my proposal, and a major area where it differs from
the other transfer proposals.

In the other transfer proposals what will be allowed is for two
independant parties to write a contract, and then ARIN will recognize
that a transfer has taken place.  It is entirely possible that the
parities will codify the transaction like this:

  "Fred offers 192.168.0.0/16 to Leo for the sum of $1,000."

That looks a lot like a sale.

In my proposal there is something quite different going on,
first, there is already a contract with ARIN:
 
  "Fred agrees that Fred has the use of the number resource
   192.168.0.0/16 under the terms laid out in the ARIN RSA."

Note that this contract in theory exists forever.  [Note, I'm sure legal
professionals will pit the nit about a contract that lasts forever
compared to one that auto-renews, I'm trying to stay out of those
weeds.]  That is, as long as Fred pays the yearly renewal and abides by
the terms of the RSA (e.g. follows ARIN policies) ARIN will allow Fred
to keep using the number resource.

What this policy allows is for ARIN to come along and say:

  "ARIN agrees to pay Fred $1,000 to terminate the existing contract
   for services right now."

It's similar to someone leasing a commercial building for 20 years,
but then 10 years in the landlord tells them "I will pay you $50,000
to move out now and let me out of the last 10 years of the contract."
Such an agreement in no way means the leaseholder now has ownership
of the building.

ARIN is /not/ paying for the number.  ARIN is paying for your trouble
to deconfigure it from your routers, similar to how the landlord
might offer to pay your moving expenses to move out early.  Neither
of those payments change your ownership position.

To me it is a very small, but very key difference.  I worry a lot
about proposals like 2008-2 and 2008-6 and what effect they may
have on the "IPs as property" argument.  This proposal has been
crafted to avoid that problem completely by making the payment have
nothing to do with the numbers, and everything to do with the trouble
of ending the contract early.

-- 
       Leo Bicknell - bicknell at ufp.org - CCIE 3440
        PGP keys at http://www.ufp.org/~bicknell/
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