[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: Customer Confidentiality

[William Herrin]

On Tue, Jun 9, 2009 at 11:46 PM, Aaron
Wendel<aaron at wholesaleinternet.net> wrote:
> I think people are missing the point.
>
> This is about a requirement that businesses publish customer lists in a
> publically available forum where their competitors or anyone else who has no
> business with the information can get to it.  This is a solution to stop the
> ********s out there from farming my SWIP information and calling my
> customers to solicit their business.

Aaron,

Cry me a river. You have enough customer lock-in due to the
renumbering problem. Now you want the playing field tipped even more
in your favor? Maybe we should have a proposal that makes your
downstream allocations permanent until released the same way your
allocations are from ARIN, independent of whether or not they remain
your transit customer. Make you be a LIR in reality instead of just in
name.

IP addresses are like public right of ways. As an ISP you get to hold
lots of them in trust, but they aren't yours. They're ours, the
general public's, and while you hold them in trust you are accountable
for their use... not to ARIN but to the general public whose commons
you are so graciously being allowed to use at an almost negligible
cost.

Disclosure is a part of that price and it has been a part of that
price since before there was an ARIN. It's a central component, one
linchpin to the process through which the community keeps its members
honest so that unlike ICANN, we won't need an external USG influence
to maintain some semblance of fairness.

Competitors rudely calling and emailing your customers is an
unfortunate side effect of that process. There ought to be and
probably is some reasonable way to mitigate that problem. But
abandoning public disclosure, the essence of your proposal, is not the
answer.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
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