[arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-176 Increase Needs-Based Justification to 60months on 8.3 Specified Transfers (Owen DeLong)

[Blecker, Christoph]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net [mailto:arin-ppml-bounces at arin.net] On
> Behalf Of sandrabrown at ipv4marketgroup.com
> Sent: June-28-12 10:38 AM
> To: arin-ppml at arin.net
> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] ARIN-prop-176 Increase Needs-Based Justification to
> 60months on 8.3 Specified Transfers (Owen DeLong)
> 

[snip]

> 
> Secondly, I am highly critical of ARIN, the ARIN AC, and the ARIN Board,
> for not understanding their most important function and purpose with
> respect to legacy addresses.  If you truly want to protect and safeguard
> the Internet, consider the following:
> 
> The most important function ARIN can provide with respect to legacy
> resources is an accurate registry. Failure to do this jeopardizes the
> financial and social safety of the internet.
> 
> Current ARIN policies in fact do not ensure an accurate registry and
> thus do not support a safe Internet.
> 
> Today many legacy address holders do not have contracts with ARIN. The
> prudent ones avoid contracts with ARIN because they correctly recognize
> legacy addresses will ultimately be worth more than non legacy addresses
> on the open market.
> 
> A /16 seller typically complies with ARIN policy in selling because it
> is not worth the relatively small sale proceeds to risk ARIN’s threat
> of court action, even though there is little likelihood that ARIN would
> prevail in court. A larger block seller is not afraid of the court costs
> or of losing in court, but may fear the stigma of publicity.
> 
> When a legacy IP holder chooses not to comply with ARIN policies,
> problems begin, because the IP holder also dodges the registry update
> step. When there is no corresponding registry to reflect these
> transactions, it opens the door for ISPs to receive other announcement
> requests without ARIN registrations and then hijacking and misuse
> becomes easier. Over time, as the ARIN registry has less relevance, the
> registry becomes meaningless as a tool to determine who has permission
> to use IPs and then control becomes more ad hoc. It is then that I
> believe that financial and possibly social misuse of ips will become
> more common.
> 

[snip]


Sandra,
The true power of ARIN and it's registry isn't divine. It's not provided by some ICANN deity. It's not provided by the government. It's not even provided by contracts or agreements.

The power of the registry comes from the internet community that recognizes it.
It's worth saying again..

The *power* of the registry comes from the _internet community_ that recognizes it.

That is the paramount concept to keep in mind here. Large end user companies actually have very little power. It's the Internet Service Providers, both here in the Americas, and around the world, that make the internet as a whole and the registry system work. Sure, anybody could make their own registry and say "HEY GUYS, I NOW OWN 24/8 AND SCREW YOUR POLICIES". Good luck though trying to get routing for that block.

Without speaking to the validity of your business model, the reality is, you're brokering the right to a number. Very specific numbers, with very specific purposes. If the numbers that a company buys won't work in the way expected, because the seller and broker decided to side-step the registry system, then somebody will be very unhappy to say the least.

Now you're all smart people, and I'm sure you very clearly realize this. However, attempting to strong-arm the community by saying that we will become irrelevant and open the internet to all sorts of problems if we don't submit to the will of the all-mighty market.. well it's just not the case.

Work *with* us, not *against* us. It was great for Jeff to start the discussion here, and I think most agree that it's a worthy discussion to have. Sure, there are lots of competing interests here. But starting to attack the integrity of the community, it's members, the process, and everybody within arm's reach when the mailing list disagrees with your proposal will get nobody anywhere.

Best regards,

--
Christoph Blecker
The University of British Columbia