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

[John Curran]

On May 23, 2011, at 5:36 PM, Mike Burns wrote:

> It's important to understand that ARIN *does* have legal contractual rights with all address holders under RSA. The RSA is the contract which gives ARIN those legal rights. But the legacy holders don't have any agreement, and so ARIN does not have any contractual rights over legacy space, as they do over RSA space.

I'm actually not certain I agree with the last part of that statement as 
written, but that is a legal matter best left for judges at another time.
(As a thought exercise, one has to first decide whether ICANN has contractual 
rights over the entire IP address space by means of the NTIA IANA functions 
contract, and then follow the various agreements from there.)

A related point worth noting regarding applicability of the RSA is that if 
a legacy holder is dealing with a recipient that has an RSA with ARIN (i.e. 
the vast majority of ISPs in the region), then some aspects of that RSA 
will apply to any number resource transfers to that recipient in any case.

> This is the clear implication of Ray Plzak's words in his declaration. Trying to bind legacy holders to ARIN policy is a difficult legal row to hoe, absent these agreements. But ARIN doesn't need any agreement with legacy holders to control Whois. I believe ARIN could legally reissue *all* legacy addresses to new allocants and update Whois. ARIN has exclusive rights to control Whois in accordance with community policy.
> 
> But your points about multiple jurisdictions is important, and goes to my argument that ARIN should recognize the most liberal address holder rights as possible to go furthest in preventing potential conflict between ARIN and address holder, or ARIN and some local government.  When you tighten up restrictions and begin the process Owen is talking about, the revokation and reissuance of space, the potential for conflict is ripe.

Agreed - ARIN's policies should only constrain resources to the extent 
necessary for "good stewardship of Internet number resources by ensuring 
fair distribution of resources and facilitating the operation of the 
Internet by those who use them." <https://www.arin.net/policy/pdp.html>

The ARIN Advisory Council is tasked with getting this done based on the
input from the community, and it takes a serious level of effort which not 
only includes keeping up with the PPML mailing list but also shaping the 
evolution of the policy proposals based on the input expressed here.

FYI,
/John 

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN