[arin-ppml] A Redefinition of IPv4 Need postARINrun-out(was:Re:Against2013-4)

[Owen DeLong]

On Jun 19, 2013, at 3:12 PM, "Mike Burns" <mike at nationwideinc.com> wrote:

> Hi John,
>  
> Sometimes Buyers buy the listing in the ARIN database- that's a policy-based sale.
> Sometimes they buy the ability to route and use the (legacy) addresses without changing that line in the Whois database.
>  
> The decision which to choose is often, but not always, based on the needs test.
> For example, recently a buyer came to me looking for legacy space with the understanding that he could not justify under ARIN policies without substantial and expensive renumbering work on his part. He thought it wiser to consider simply buying the addresses "off the books" if it was less expensive and onerous than the renumbering. Now we can consider whether this is the kind of behavior the community wishes to allow or to incentivize or disincentivize, but we should not ignore the presence of these players and their affect on Whois integrity if we keep in place the same policy designed for free pool addresses where the profit motive could be ignored.
>  

What plans does this purchaser have for dealing with the situation when the resources are revoked for fraud and subsequently allocated to another organization?

Sure, what you describe works, so long as nobody notices and there is no competing announcement from a properly registered party, but an off-books transaction as you describe above is rather like buying a car from someone who can't give you the pink slip.

> We seem to be trying to protect the Internet from the profit motives of "hoarders and speculators" while ignoring the effect of profit motives of other players here. If a buyer wants to get cash for addresses, and a seller wants to pay cash for addresses, guess what happens?

I think that the number of entities willing to risk their addresses not working or suddenly failing as a result of off-books transactions is likely to be relatively low. As such, unless you can provide evidence that such transactions are occurring more than on rare occasion or that they involve significant fractions of the address space, then I think this is significantly less of a risk to the integrity of the registry than the elimination of needs basis.

> But unless somebody like this volunteers evidence that they engaged in a non-policy transfer to a policy development board for an organization whose policies they don't recognize as binding them, well I guess it doesn't happen.

If there are so many of these transactions as you suggest, research against the routing tables should be sufficient to produce the required evidence. So far, despite a great deal of research, nobody has brought forth any such evidence.

> We are stewards of the registry first.

No. We are stewards of the address space first. The registry is a tool for achieving that stewardship.

Owen

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