[arin-ppml] Microsoft receives court approval for transfer as agreed with ARIN

[John Curran]

On Apr 28, 2011, at 2:27 AM, Michel Py wrote:

> A precedent has been created. A court of law has ruled that legacy
> prefixes were sellable assets (at least, in a bankruptcy context).
> Unless ARIN plans to appeal the ruling (seems difficult to me), it is
> necessary to implement new policies that take the new reality into
> account.

Actually, ARIN's policies are quite fine with respect to the ruling
(as the asset sale agreement was modified per our request).  The 
Seller's Rights in the number resources are transferred to the 
recipient in accordance with the community's policies.

> Part of designing these new policies requires a better understanding
> of the problems that the current policies posed to the current situation,
> which in turn requires a better understanding of what legacy holders are
> willing to negotiate in return of staying within the ARIN framework and
> what will trigger them to bypass ARIN.

That is likely to vary significantly by legacy holders, so we need to 
hear from them on this matter.  I don't know if the parties in this
transaction will be saying more, but there are certainly thousands of
legacy holders who have the opportunity to do so.

> Unless some details are provided, I predict that no significant change
> to policies will be made in time for the next large, public trade
> occurs, which will put you in the hot seat again and that time you won't
> be able to say that you did not see it coming.

We've actually seen this need coming for quite some time; one could argue
that the specified transfer policy *was* the response to the anticipated
need. If this policy isn't right for legacy holders, then they need to 
speak up accordingly.

/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN