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

[Owen DeLong]

> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> 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.
> 

Ah, but, this cuts both ways. Legacy holders don't have any agreement and so don't have
any contractual rights, either, unless they're under LRSA or RSA with ARIN.

> 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.

With respect to registrations, all ARIN really does is control the various databases
maintained by ARIN. All ARIN policy really governs is how ARIN manages those
databases. They include Whois, ARIN's internal registration databases, the database
from which ARIN generates it's in-addr.arpa and ip6.arpa zones, and certain other
ancillary databases.

Any other belief about exclusive rights to use, sell, buy, route, or otherwise use
the number resources registered (or not registered) by ARIN is a somewhat
separate matter. The internet works because ISPs choose to cooperate with
the RIR system and make routing decisions based on what is in the ARIN
and other RIR databases. There is nothing that prevents any ISP or group
of ISPs from developing their own independent internet, registry structure,
etc. and doing as they wish with it, including starting over with all numbers
freshly unregistered an an entire 32-bit IPv4 greenfield address space.

However, if they expect those registrations to be able to talk to the current
IPv4 internet, well, there are some problems.

However, in terms of ARIN policy, that governs how ARIN administers the
registration database that ARIN maintains, regardless of whether the entries
are legacy holders or not. Traditionally ARIN has bent over backwards to
accommodate legacy holders to the greatest extent possible in favor of
preserving a coherent community and a useful internet.

I'm not advocating that we change this, but, I do _NOT_ want to expand
the pool of resource holders accommodated in this manner and would
rather seek ways in which we can reduce the size of that pool. Eventually,
IPv6 will move the meaningful size of that pool to very nearly zero anyway.

> 
> 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.  

Actually, it is not at all unlikely that many of the governments within the ARIN region
would consider ARIN abandoning it's needs-basis stewardship of the addresses
as an unauthorized abdication and conflict in the opposite direction.

> 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.

We aren't talking about tightening up restrictions. We're talking about not removing existing
restrictions. The reclamation and reissuance that I have advocated is already there in
current policy.

You are the one proposing a change. I have been describing the current state of policy.

Mischaracterizing my position as advocating for change (with the implication that you
are advocating codifying existing practice) really doesn't reflect the reality of the
situation.
> 


Owen