[arin-ppml] Draft Policy ARIN-2015-6: Transfers and Multi-national Networks

[Matthew Kaufman]

On 6/23/2015 4:16 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 6:55 PM, Scott Leibrand <scottleibrand at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 3:36 PM, William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jun 23, 2015 at 4:06 PM, ARIN <info at arin.net> wrote:
>>>> Draft Policy ARIN-2015-6
>>>> Transfers and Multi-national Networks
>>> OPPOSED.
>> Noted.  Can you read over my comments below, and then note why you think
>> it's a bad idea to ignore the geographic location where an organization is
>> utilizing its ARIN-registered addresses when evaluating transfer requests?
>> I'm hoping to hear the consequentialist argument behind your position,
>> independent of the appeal to authority (of the PDP) that you gave below.
> Hi Scott,
>
> Sure.
>
> It grants large, multinational corporations unhindered access to IP
> addresses for worldwide use.

As opposed to now, where large multinational corporation have unhindered 
access to IP addresses that they use worldwide? (Many of whom are using 
these addresses to allow small companies to deploy services all over the 
world, even)

We could just ask large multinational corporations to spend a little 
more on lawyer to create more subsidiaries and/or just buy up the right 
to use address space without bothering to update the registry, if that 
would make you happier.

>   Such addresses are denied to smaller
> organizations in the same localities who can't claim an ARIN-region
> presence.

Such addresses are about to be denied to anyone who doesn't have cash to 
buy them (except perhaps, for a few more months, in Africa). Meanwhile, 
there's lots of addresses available on the transfer market in these 
other regions that they can access. What's the problem exactly?

> The addresses are also rendered less accessible to
> organizations solely within the ARIN region who can't support a
> purchase with profit from a region where addresses are in higher
> demand. It's a cross-subsidy (one source and consequence of monopoly
> power) for organizations many of whom are already close enough to
> being monopolies as makes no difference.

All this says is that long before we ran out of addresses we should have 
stopped having them be regional. There's a whole lot of legitimate 
reasons for entities, small and large, to expect to be able to portably 
use their address space anywhere in the world... especially if they've 
paid a bunch of real cash for it, as will be happening.

>
> Bottom line: it's grossly unfair to all of us who aren't large
> multinational corporations.

Everything is unfair to people who don't have the cash to buy address 
space inside or outside their region. Those who can afford it will do 
whatever other steps are needed (skipping registration, forming 
subsidiaries) because now, and in the future, addresses themselves will 
cost enough that such things are a tiny fraction of the transaction cost.

Matthew Kaufman
matthew at matthew.at