[arin-ppml] About needs basis in 8.3 transfers

[Owen DeLong]

On Jun 12, 2014, at 6:38 AM, Mike Burns <mike at iptrading.com> wrote:

> You seem to think there is somebody, somewhere you can tap on the shoulder and offer a couple of billion and he can transfer hundreds of millions of addresses to you.  Without the needs test, you can be sure every transfer will be booked and visible, unlike those transfers driven underground by the needs test. That visibility, and innate seller fragmentation,  is our protection against this kind of scheme.
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> How can we be sure of that? What assurance do we have that this is the case? What assurance can you offer that they will be made visible immediately?
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> Really, there is no such assurance and pretending that there is strikes me as very questionable.
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>  
>  
> Hi Owen,
>  
> By policy, all the RIRs that allow transfers mandate the publishing of that information. So we know every block that was transferred in Whois.

Yes… But what assurance do we have that removal of needs basis would somehow magically get more of these transfers recorded in whois?

> And by decades-long processes, address distribution has been fragmented, with owners of large and small blocks scattered around the globe.
> I suggest that it would be impossible to dragoon enough sellers into a silent coalition bent on market manipulation to effect such.

Why? You think that offering someone lots of money for a transaction and asking them to work with you on the recording date of the transaction with the RIR is difficult? I don’t. I don’t think it would be hard at all.

> And who wants to pay large amounts of money for an asset and not have the ownership booked in the authoritative database? It is a normal business incentive to do this, but sometimes the needs-test requirement precludes it, and  poof! turns good companies into bad actors.

Someone who doesn’t want their actions publicly known for a variety of reasons. This happens all the time with hostile takeovers as was previously noted.

The needs test does not turn good companies into bad actors. Good companies that actually need the address space and conform to policy have no trouble getting their transfers recorded.

Changing the definition of bad actors can, indeed, make a bunch of bad actors now fit the reformed definition of “good companies”, but similarly, repealing laws against bank robbers would then make bank robbers no longer defined as criminals.

I find this rather tautological argument very unpersuasive.

Owen

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