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

[Milton L Mueller]

> -----Original Message-----
> > When Mr. Lewis says that "My membership in ARIN is funding my ability
> to find out who is sending me packets" he may be overlooking the fact
> that his membership is also funding that ability for all kinds of other
> people as well, many of whom are free riders and/or have no contract
> with ARIN.
> 
> That is the whole point of a Public Network Information Database.
> 
[Milton L Mueller] 

McTim,
The issue is not "Can anyone query the Whois and get information out of it?" 

The issue is, rather, what makes ARIN's Whois authoritative and what does it mean for it to be authoritative, especially when a large portion of the registrations are not maintained or authorized by the actual ip address block holder? What kinds of obligations do ip address holders incur when they register in ARIN's Whois, as opposed to those who don't? How can an authoritative Whois database be maintained, updated and relied upon for policy purposes when many legacy holders don't even participate in ARIN? That's the issue, and imho prop-133 addresses it (no pun intended) head on and therefore is a good initiative.