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

[Owen DeLong]

On Feb 16, 2011, at 4:18 PM, John Santos wrote:

> On Wed, 16 Feb 2011, Owen DeLong wrote:
> 
>>> There's no special right, just the right to use the addresses as
>>> they always have, not subject to capricious revokation or random
>>> reallocation or reassignment of their addresses by an organization
>>> with whom they have no contract or business relationship.
>>> 
>> Speaking only for myself...
>> 
>> I think it is unfair to characterize any ARIN revocation, reallocation,
>> or reassignment that has taken place as capricious.
>> 
>> To the best of my knowledge, ARIN has always had very good reasons
>> supported by policy developed by the community for each and
>> every resource that has been revoked, reallocated, or reassigned
>> with the possible exception of some accidental duplicates, in which
>> case, what was done was an attempt to minimize and disruption
>> to the parties involved, usually with the cooperation and consent
>> of the parties.
>> 
>> Owen
> 
> I should have been more clear:  "Capricious" wasn't meant to be a
> characterization of ARIN's past actions, but a worst-case fear for
> the future.  Some of the proposals that have been made here in the
> past would I think qualify, but none has come close to passing.
> 
I believe that ARIN leadership has a sufficient track record of carefully
avoiding arbitrary or capricious action to warrant a certain level of
benefit of the doubt. They will, I believe, even in the worst case,
cautiously implement policy defined by the community and ratified
by the Board of Trustees.

I think the fact that no arbitrary or capricious proposal has come
close to passing can be viewed as a certain amount of assurance that
the process does, indeed, work as intended. It would work better,
especially being able to better represent the interests of legacy
holders if more of them participated in the process.

Unfortunately, while we are discussing (unreasonable) fears, there
appears to be a fair amount of fear among some legacy holders
that if they participate in the ARIN public policy process, it will
somehow weaken their (arbitrary and capricious) position that
ARIN has no responsibility for or authority over their registrations
and/or what happens to the addresses if they are no longer using
them for the purpose under which they were granted.

> Sanity and fairness always seem to have prevailed at least as long
> as I've been lurking on PPML, which I think is one of the strongest
> arguments for preserving ARIN's role.
> 
I completely agree.

Owen
(who continues to try and keep things sane so long as the members
continue to re-elect me)