[arin-ppml] FW: Proposal: Clarification of draft policy 2009-3 (ARIN-prop-135)

[Owen DeLong]

On Feb 22, 2011, at 1:16 PM, Matthew Petach wrote:

> On Tue, Feb 22, 2011 at 12:46 PM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> ...
>> In each case, the registrations which from that region prior to
>> the RIR formation ("legacy registrations") where transferred
>> under that RIR.
> 
> If that's truly the case, that the registrations were actually
> transferred to be under the control of the RIR as part of the
> transition, then isn't the whole RSA/LRSA/non-signing
> legacyholder debate totally moot?  If their address blocks
> really *were* transferred under ARIN, explicitly, as part of
> the formation of the RIR, then they fall under the policies
> and auspices of that RIR.
> 
Exactly correct. Sort of.

> However, currently we're treating them as though they're
> outside the RIR system, where policies don't apply to them,
> they don't have to pay for resources the same way, and
> don't have to sign the same agreement documents.  To me,
> that says that their resources were *NOT* transferred under
> the RIR at the time of the transition, and instead fall under
> some other global umbrella.
> 
Just my opinion (not speaking for ARIN or the AC):

The difficulty comes in the fact that without a specific contract
(there wasn't such a contract used in the predecessor registries),
retroactive application of policy is difficult at best. It would be
a disservice to the ARIN community as a whole to do a blanket
termination of services for legacy registrants.

In other words, while ARIN probably has the ability to subject
legacy holders to ARIN policy, whether or not doing so is a
good idea is an entirely different question. Yes, there are those
that want to argue ARIN has no such ability. I don't think they
are entirely correct, but, the lack of a contract means that the
winner of such an argument is very uncertain, at best.
However, the entire internet will most assuredly lose if
such an argument goes to full possible scale or even
a significant fraction.

> So.  Once and for all, can we please have it stated clearly,
> and for the record:
> 
> Under whose auspices do the current legacy holders hold
> their space?  Under whose stewardship do those blocks
> exist?  If they were assigned under SRI or NSI, did they
> transfer to ARIN at the time of the RIR creation, or did
> they revert back to the parent of SRI/NSI, which at this
> point would be IANA?
> 
The were transferred to the RIRs as the RIRs were formed.

Owen
>