[arin-ppml] IPv4 Transfer Policy Change to Keep Whois Accurate

[Owen DeLong]

On May 11, 2011, at 3:51 PM, Matthew Kaufman wrote:

> On 5/11/2011 2:12 PM, Mike Burns wrote:
>> 
>> ARIN later revealed the policy utilized to be NRPM 8.3, which requires four things which may or may not have actually happened:
>> 
>> 1. Addresses are supposed to be issued back to ARIN and then reissued to the recipient, Microsoft, and the bankruptcy docs did not reveal this happened in any way.
> 
> 8.3 doesn't say that. It says "released", and ARIN says the release was sufficient for their needs.
> 
It says "released TO ARIN".

I'm not sure that I see a meaningful difference between "issued back to", "released to", or "returned to",
but, if you believe the words somehow have a significantly different meaning, that's fine. Point is that
the addresses do not flow from the transferor to the transferee, they flow from the transferor to ARIN
to the transferee.

>> 2. Address are supposed to be transferred as a single aggregate, but if the addresses were an assortment of netblocks from prior Nortel acquisitions, this could not have happened.
> 
> ARIN says they read that part of 8.3 as applying to the needs assessment and NOT to the transfer... in other words the "need" is based on a single aggregate but >1 block can be part of a transfer. Doesn't matter, because you can just do multiple serial transfers to get around this if it is read the other way.
> 
Yes, this appears to me to be misinterpretation by ARIN staff of language that was accidentally
and unexpectedly vague in its intent. While I believe that the community intent in the policy was
clear and that the staff interpretation is arguably nonsensical, the fact remains that it is a valid
gramatical construction of the policy as it exists and I support resolving this difference.

>> 3. Recipients were required to sign an RSA, MS signed a modified LRSA.
> 
> LRSA is "an RSA". (Not that RSA is even defined in the NRPM... I have a proposal that fixes this)
> 
Indeed, the policy language here is also unfortunately ambiguous and I support resolving
this as well. I believe that the intent of the community was for recipients to sign a standard
current RSA and not any form of legacy RSA.

>> 4. Finally, the requirement at issue here, a needs analysis had to be completed by ARIN, which magically showed that MS qualified for exactly the amount already bid for and negotiated the sale of.
> 
> Needs assessment is under NDA, so we'll never know.
> 
It is not unlikely that Micr0$0ft bid for exactly what they needed, so, I fail to see why this
is regarded as so unlikely.

Owen