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

[David Conrad]

John,

On Apr 28, 2011, at 7:04 AM, John Curran wrote:
> Quite possibly...  there is no apparent motivation for them to feel 
> otherwise.  The fact that others (such as network operators) have 
> certain rights to the registry entries (e.g. visibility) is likely
> lost on many.

ARIN does not have a monopoly on the ability to run a whois server. If ARIN refuses to list a transfer that has occurred, it devalues the ARIN registry (at least in the eyes of folks who are interested in tracking down who is actually using address space).  Devalue the registry enough and folks will look elsewhere.

>> The two court rulings to date (Kremens and the NNI bankruptcy) would seem to uphold the legacy holders' point of view.
> <chuckle>  

Useful contribution to the discussion there, John.

> A very interesting perspective, but incorrect. ARIN has only
> changed registrations according to the community developed policy, and
> parties seeking otherwise have not prevailed in goals to the contrary.

Strawman. To remind you of the context, Michel stated:

>> A precedent has been created. A court of law has ruled that legacy
>> prefixes were sellable assets (at least, in a bankruptcy context).


If you disagree, can you explain how Kremens waiting until after the statute of limitations expired has an impact on the fact that in the Kremens v. Cohen case, the court awarded address space registered to Cohen to Kremens as an asset? With regards to the NNI case, can you point out where the bankruptcy court did not view NNI's address space as a sellable asset?

> Actually, it's really not the "ARIN" view that there are policies that govern 
> Internet address space; it's the actual governance model that the collective 
> Internet community has set up for management of these identifiers.  

And you believe the folks who received address space multiple decades ago who are stupid, ignorant, and/or evil enough to believe that those addresses are theirs buy into the model because?  Can you point to any contractual or other  agreements that would be legally binding on legacy holders that would support your view?

> We believe 
> that the number resources should be managed by a multi-stakeholder, private 
> sector led, bottom-up policy development model of technical coordination that 
> acts for the benefit of global Internet users.  

Oddly, I've heard that chant before, even partaken of it myself on occasion.  However, there is this thing called "reality" where "should be" doesn't necessarily correlate with "are".

The reality (at least as I see it) is that at least some legacy holders believe (if they consider the question at all) that the IP addresses in their inventory are their asset to do with as they please.  As far as I can tell, they do not see any positive business incentive in participating in a system or process that does not recognize this.  Clearly there are those in the ARIN community that disagree with this view.  However, ARIN is not a government granted monopoly and does not have the power of law to enforce its views outside of contractual relationships.  It is a 501(c)(6) trade association that acts as a meeting place where like minded entities can come together to devise their own rules as to how they go about doing things.  Attempting to apply those rules to folks who are not like minded is unlikely to be a long-term viable proposition.

> Now, there may be some folks who believe that policies that result from such 
> a management model limits their options when monetizing their resources, but 
> that is no different than an organization that doesn't like the present 
> policies regarding the DNS system.  Their recourse is to participate in 

> the policy development process and change the policies to meet their needs.  

Or not and wait for market reality to render ARIN (the entity) irrelevant if ARIN (the community) chooses to try to ignore that reality.

Regards,
-drc