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

[Mike Burns]

Hi John,

>
>> Do you quibble with my parsing?

>Indeed.  To be accurate:

>In 2006, ARIN did not have an agreement with UUNET (or other legacy
>address holders) which would give it authority over their specific
>legacy addresses.

OK, does ARIN have an agreement today (excepting LRSA signers) which would 
give it authority over legacy addresses?

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

>What *exactly* would you allegedly be selling to Company A?  You
>have already indicated that it is not related to Whois, so do you
>believe it is related to Company A's ability to use those numbers
>in the Internet?

Let's just say it's an asset sale, exactly like the one we have on public 
record in the MS/Nortel deal.
And the listed assets showed the rights to control a specific netblock. 
Would that be a legal transaction?

>> If Company A tried to route those addresses, would that be illegal?

>Not to the best of my knowledge (regardless of the status at ARIN
>and/or whatever Company A thinks they bought from you...)

>/John


My legal interpretation seems correct. All I have ever said is that ARIN has 
no authority over legacy address holders control rights and cannot stop a 
sale of legacy addresses from one party to another, legally.

What ARIN can do is fail to update Whois, and maybe re-allocate them to 
somebody else and have Whois reflect the new allocant's information.

You wrote, along with Ray Plzak and ARIN counsel Steve Ryan, in 2008:

This paper demonstrates the heightened need for a consistent
legal and public policy approach to critical management issues

regarding "Internet number resources," which include Internet

Protocol ("IP") addresses and Autonomous System numbers.

I believe that if anything, the need for consistency is even more heightened 
now. There is a need for ARIN policy to be consistent with legal policy, in 
order to minimize legal conflict, and more importantly, to maintain Whois as 
an accurate and reliable registry of who controls what netblocks.


Regards,
Mike