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

[Owen DeLong]

Sent from my iPad

On May 23, 2011, at 15:09, "Mike Burns" <mike at nationwideinc.com> wrote:

> 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?

Certainly certain interpretations of the MoU between ICANN and the RIRs could be seen
to at least give some authority in this regard.

> 
>>> 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?
> 

Control it in what respects? What, exactly would the "rights to control a specific net block"
mean in this context? What rights does Nortel/MS have to control what I put in my routers?
What right do they have to control what any other ISP they aren't paying puts in their
routers? Does their right to control what ISPs they are paying come from this right to
control the net blocks, or, does it come from their other contract?

>>> 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.
> 

Uh, sure, but, what exactly are those rights you speak of? As near as I can tell, other than
the right to update whois and or the hope that some significant fraction of ISPs will
accept the route, there's really no there there.

> 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.
> 

Exactly.

> 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.
> 

Again, this comes down to the question of what control of a net block means.

If you believe it means the ability to control other's people's behaviors on their
routers in regards to the net block, I think you are mistaken. If you believe it
means the ability to update whois and/or maintain some hope that some fraction
of ISPs will accept your ability to influence their behavior in their routers with
regards to the net block in question, well, that's more feasible, but, I believe in
that case, what ARIN recognizes will, in many ways, be more important than
"legal policy" as I find it hard to imagine a judge ruling against a number of
ISPs that are not even party to a case and forcing them to update their
routers in a particular way.

Owen