[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-140 Business Failure Clarification

[Matthew Kaufman]

On May 2, 2011, at 12:07 PM, John Curran wrote:

> On May 2, 2011, at 8:20 PM, Matthew Kaufman wrote:
>> ...
>> I'm not a bankruptcy attorney either... this might need discussion.
> 
> As part of trying to get staff input into the process earlier (as 
> discussed earlier in the week on this list), please note:
> 
> 1) The policy proposal suggests "Potential confusion exists over the 
>   requirement to return address space from a bankrupt entity. This is
>   a needed clarification to the policy manual" whereas this language 
>   has not resulted in any actual confusion for ARIN staff.

I'm sure it hasn't. But much of the discussion regarding (for instance) the Nortel-Microsoft transaction was that a plain-language reading of the NRPM by community members didn't match ARIN staff interpretation of the NRPM.

I want it to be the case that anyone can flip open the NRPM, see the rule, and know that that's how things will be.

So, in this case, the fact that the NRPM suggests that ARIN should be going after resources when a company goes bankrupt means that ARIN's actions *seem* to not match the policy (to anyone who reads the policy as requiring ARIN to do that).

In other words I attribute the confusion here not to ARIN staff but to those who might be trying to figure out what ARIN might do in a given context based on what is written down in the NRPM.

> 
> 2) ARIN must handle bankruptcies in compliance with appropriate law;
>   encoding a specific legal approach within policy is both ill-advised 
>   and inconsistent with the Policy Development Process which states 
>   that ARIN business practices are not policy matters.

Yes, agreed.

Perhaps that is a much better way of wording this policy so that the NRPM simply notes that ARIN will comply with applicable bankruptcy law and does not suggest that ARIN will be attempting to reclaim resources until they are really and truly "abandoned".

Matthew Kaufman