[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-136 Services Opt-out Allowed for Unaffiliated Address Blocks

[John Curran]

On Feb 26, 2011, at 1:54 AM, Matthew Kaufman wrote:
>> ARIN has full authority to manage entries in the
>> ARIN Whois database.
> 
> I keep reading this as "ARIN has full authority to remove entries that are currently in the ARIN whois database and (re-)assign the addresses that now appear to be free as a result to new holders"... Am I wrong?

You are correct, if by full authority you mean legal authority.
I will immediately note that there are many things one can do
that is legal that may not be proper, particularly if one is a
non-profit serving a particular mission and which has agreed to
serve as part of the global number registry system.

It's actually quite similar to the question that came up earlier,
when someone asked if the Board developed policy or did the 
community.  The fact is that the Board certainly has the ability
to make policy, but we've adopted a policy development process
which greatly encourages that policy is developed by the Internet
community via a particular open and transparent process.  What 
is normally appropriate to do in order to serve the mission is 
often a subset of the full range of actions which are simply 
allowed by law.

So, in the case of the particular reassignment that you propose,
I will note that we have done that on occasion, but generally 
only as a result of a resource fraud report when we determine
that the original resource holder is defunct and the addresses
have been hijacked.  To do so simply because an registration 
was out of date and pointed to the original resource holder 
(despite obvious use by an unrelated party now) would require
very clear direction from the community, and obviously would
conflict with several policy proposals that have been made
recently.

Hope this helps,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN