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

[Mike Burns]

Hi John,

>In 2006, ARIN CEO's Ray Plzak said the following in his statement on the 
>Kremen matter:

  'Like other “legacy” address holder’s issued resources before ARIN began,
   ARIN has never had an agreement with UUNET that would give it authority
   over those specific resources.'

>I am certain that Ray believed those words to be true and accurate at the 
>time
>he stated them.  I will point out that he was referring specifically to 
>lack of an
>agreement with that particular legacy holder

No, John, he explicitly said "Like other legacy address holders".


> that would provide the ability to
>unilaterally implement the court's order, and also note that he goes on to 
>state
>furthermore that sub-allocations had been made out of those blocks to other
>parties uncertain to ARIN.

Yes, ARIN was basically saying that a subset of addresses Kremen was 
claiming "ownership" of  were legacy addresses.
And in that context, ARIN was saying to the judge, "We have no authority 
over legacy addresses."


>Based on his statements, you've determined that "ARIN head Plzak declared
>that ARIN does not control legacy addresses."    That's your prerogative, 
>but
>it looks to me to be a rather creative generalization of his points.

It looks to me like precisely what he was saying when you parse his 
statement to get rid of extraneous information:

"ARIN has never had an agreement that would give it authority over legacy 
addresses."

Do you quibble with my parsing?

>Unlike Ray, I was at ARIN's inception.  I am also the President and CEO of 
>ARIN
>today, and I have stated for the record that ARIN does not control what IP 
>addresses
>people choose to use in their routers, but we definitely and with full 
>authority control
>the entries in the ARIN Whois DB and that those entries shall be maintained 
>in
>accordance with law and the policies developed by the community.

>Feel free to keep this more current statement  in mind when developing 
>policies
>for this region as it will help reduce your confusion greatly.

>Thanks!
>/John

John, whenever confronted with this question, you resort to boilerplate 
language relating to control over Whois.
Which is a red herring. So I will try to pin you down, to reduce everybody's 
confusion.

If I was allocated legacy space and never signed an LRSA, would it be 
illegal for me to sell those addresses to Company A?
If Company A tried to route those addresses, would that be illegal?

Please answer without relating to Whois. I realize that Whois would not be 
updated to reflect the sale, that is the whole point of my proposal.
I am not asking about "transfers", okay? I am asking about sales.
I'm not asking whether you could allocate those addresses to somebody else 
and have Whois reflect the new allocation.
I'm not asking whether a string of numbers has any value.
I'm not claiming ARIN can tell anybody what numbers to configure into their 
routers.
I'm not looking for a flip answer like "It would not be illegal for me to 
sell you the address 192.168.1.1, either."

I'm asking if it is illegal to sell legacy addresses without notifying ARIN, 
as this goes directly to the rationale for my proposal.
In the real world, if it is not illegal, and if it provides incentives to 
buyer and to seller, these tranactions WILL happen.
And still in the real world, if the addresses continue to be usable after 
the sale, these sales WILL happen, and Whois accuracy will be lost.

Regards,
Mike