[arin-ppml] [arin-announce] [Fwd: ARIN-prop-133: No Volunteer Services on Behalf of Unaffiliated Address Blocks]

[Edward Lewis]

At 14:28 -0600 2/14/11, Benson Schliesser wrote:

>For what it's worth, I personally agree with the perspective quoted above.
>But I don't think it gets at the heart of the issue exposed by prop 133.
>The question we must ask ourselves is whether ARIN is acting appropriately
>by listing legacy resources *and extending restrictive policy over the
>update of those listings*.

It's been a while, so I don't know what the reference to "restrictive 
policy" is.  The way I think of this is, if the legacy holders aren't 
going to participate in ARIN, then you can't force them.  If we 
decide to mess around with the listings or even prevent the legacy 
holder from updating them, we are only hurting our paying selves.  If 
my neighbor's house was built before my subdivision and he isn't gong 
to pay the homeowner's ransom to the community, I still want to know 
what his emergency phone number is.  If his house is about to catch 
on fire and embers will blow towards my shed, I need to call him.

>One way to look at this question is, as you have done, to frame Whois as
>a service intended to benefit the broader Internet.  If we think in
>these terms, then the impetus is on accuracy of the data.  For some of
>that data, the "authority" to declare accuracy rests with ARIN or another RIR.
>However, for the legacy Whois data there isn't a clearly delegated
>"authority".  Who is allowed to request updates, and under what
>circumstances would ARIN be correct to deny them?

I don't think I want to pay ARIN to go so far as ensuring the data is 
up todate and accurate.  That's a tall order and would be quite 
expensive.  (I used to work at ARIN and for other domain name 
registries.)  Accuracy is nice, but even an stale hint is beneficial, 
it might lead to the latest information.  Besides, I only need to 
contact my reclusive neighbor when there's a real need to do so.

>To give you an example: current policy is a bit like your neighbors
>deciding who owns your house, and publishing a list of neighborhood
>homeowners, without your consent.  As long as you agree with their
>published list there is no reason for you to worry.  But if they ever
>decided to "reclaim" your house and/or refuse to acknowledge a "transfer"
>of your house to a new owner, well, that would be a different story.
>You might not like the comparison to real property, which we can debate.
>So take it further, if you want, and imagine this same kind of scenario
>applied to other forms of property, intellectual property, music rights,
>etc, and the issues become more complicated (and potential liability
>becomes more expensive).

The only problem with analogies is that there are limits in their 
applicability.  (When the lines get crossed, discussion gets out of 
hand.)  I was really active in the RIR arena from 2002 to 2008. 
Admittedly, that's a long time ago now, but "taking away" resources 
wasn't discussed.

When it comes to transfers though I see the dilemma.  If my neighbor 
sells his house and tries to give us the new number of the new owner, 
we balk saying "no one owns thie land, it's all part of a 
cooperative."  At this point we could stand on principle and see his 
entry in our ledger go stale or recognize he's not in the tribe and 
just record the new entry.  (You can guess what I'd opt for - the 
latter, that is.)

>Another way to look at this question, as I have done with prop 133, is
>to frame Whois as a service to benefit the address holders listed within it.
>If we think in these terms, then it becomes clear that "authority" is
>delegated by the address holder when they request service.  There should be
>no ambiguity about whether ARIN is acting appropriately, because ARIN has
>a legally valid policy for identifying legitimate address holders, accepting
>a request to provide services, etc.

I don't think that WhoIs is a benefit to the holders listed in it.

The benefit of the registry is the protection of uniqueness.  This is 
why the central database is the most important thing in the ARIN 
world.  Like DNS, WhoIs is just a "report" run from the database for 
the benefit of relying parties.

>Now, getting back to my first comment, I agree that there are open issues
>with prop 133.  For instance, who provides in-addr and Whois for legacy
>holders that don't choose to sign the LRSA?  One alternative is
>competitive post-allocation services such as those mentioned at 
><http://www.circleid.com/posts/competition_to_regional_internet_registries_rir_for_post_allocation_service/>
>http://www.circleid.com/posts/competition_to_regional_internet_registries_rir_for_post_allocation_service/
>and again this past weekend at 
><http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/2/12/4748945.html>
>http://blog.internetgovernance.org/blog/_archives/2011/2/12/4748945.html.
>
>Another alternative might be for ARIN to enable transfers without requiring
>LRSA.  But any approach requires a definition of "legitimate address
>holder" in order to answer the fundamental question of "authority".

I think tying WhoIs and DNS to "determining the legitimate" holder of 
a number resource to be too high of a bar.  I don't care if the guy 
next to me is a legit owner or a squatter when he has the ability to 
get out the fire extinguisher and stop the fire from harming my 
property.  Oops, "property."

The bottom line is - DNS and WhoIs hold information that is for the 
benefit of general users of the Internet, including those funding 
ARIN.  Degrading the quality of information about non-ARIN (and 
non-RIR) allocated resources in the DNS and WhoIs is just shooting 
the membership in the foot.

-- 
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Edward Lewis             
NeuStar                    You can leave a voice message at +1-571-434-5468

Me to infant son: "Waah! Waah! Is that all you can say?  Waah?"
Son: "Waah!"
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