[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-174 Policies Apply to All Resources in the Registry

[Owen DeLong]

On Jun 20, 2012, at 2:07 PM, William Herrin wrote:

> On Wed, Jun 20, 2012 at 11:23 AM, Chris Grundemann
> <cgrundemann at gmail.com> wrote:
>> You seem to keep repeating this mantra and while I am not a lawyer, I
>> am curious; how does the lack of a contract give one party infinite
>> rights and another no rights?
> 
> Hi Chris,
> 
> There is no contract between myself and the Sleepy Hollow Citizens
> Association with respect to the use of my house. They publish my name,
> address and phone number in a directory and coordinate worthy
> activities like the neighborhood watch. When I remember, I pay the
> dues. Yet I have all the rights to my house. They have none. You
> follow?

Incorrect analogy.

First, since you (occasionally) pay the dues, you have a contract. It may
not be written or explicit, but there is at least an implied contract.
(You expect and they intend to publish said directory (meeting of the minds)
and you have paid them to do so (consideration)).

Second, the contract is not for the use of your home, it is for their
publication of your data in their directory. If you were not paying them
and truly had no contract, you would absolutely have no right
and they would have no obligation with regards to what they
published or did not publish in their directory being to your liking.

> 
> Now, some folks I know bought houses with a homeowner's association.
> There's a covenant (i.e. contract) attached to their deed. They signed
> a fresh copy when they bought the house as a condition of buying the
> house. Even though the house belongs to them, the contract gives the
> HOA specific rights with respect to the dues, exterior look of the
> house, etc. The HOA can even place a lien on the house and foreclose.
> Still following?
> 

Yep.

> The Nortel judge ruled that Nortel had exclusive rights to its legacy
> addresses. Subordinate to no one. If true (i.e. if future rulings
> follow the Nortel pattern), then ARIN doesn't have rights with respect
> to the legacy addresses. It can publish a directory. But it has no
> rights.

The question is whether Nortel has exclusive rights to dictate the
contents of the ARIN directory with respect to numbers which
match what the judge claims they had exclusive rights to.

I'm willing to bet that I could identify other users of those same numbers
in other contexts which do not violate the judges intent while they
are actually in conflict with any alleged exclusive right to some set
of numbers.

Bottom line, nobody has exclusive rights to numbers. It's akin to saying
someone has exclusive rights to breathing air.

So, let's look at who controls what gets put in the registry records
and recognize that all ARIN policy applies only to that and has
little if any control even over how others use that data.

In that context, absent an RSA of some form, ARIN has no legal obligation
to protect any given legacy registration. Nonetheless, it would be very
bad policy for ARIN to delete such registrations without cause and I would
not support policy to do so.

Owen