[arin-ppml] Thoughts on 2015-7

[John Curran]

On Oct 5, 2015, at 4:07 PM, Martin Hannigan <hannigan at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Let me give you a real world example.
> 
> 1. Buy rights to use addresses in any quantity you believe you need
> 2. Use those addresses as you need them, assuming the agreement you made with the party works properly
> 3. Get an LOA from the documented owner
> 4. Bypass ARIN entirely
> 5. Use the addresses.
> 
> How do you think we should solve that problem?


It is not my job to determine whether the example above is a major problem (or not) - 
that’s for the community to assess, but I do want to highlight some aspects that result 
from situations (such as the one described above) of which everyone on the list might 
not be aware - 

1) While the network operations confusion that can result is fairly well understood to
    those on this list, what may not be apparently is that there are others who rely upon 
    the registry (e.g. researchers, anti-spam folks, law enforcement, etc.) and for whom
    address blocks being used as described above results in real impacts to their ability
    to rely upon the registry, and thus accomplish their job.

2) Because the “documented owner” doesn’t ever update the registry, a number of
    creative schemes are possible whereby the documented owner gets paid from
    multiple parties for the same rights and then effectively disappears with their 
    proceeds leaving the individual buyers to fight it out.  There are ways to reduce
    this risk (e.g. escrow arrangements, guarantees with adequate backing, etc.)
    but the need for these (and probability of circumvention) goes up dramatically 
    absent an updated registry.  Likewise for the case where the “documented 
    owner” doesn’t actually have a documentation trail that would support their 
    ability to sell the rights to even one party, but that is not uncovered since the
    documentation never gets reviewed by the registry.

I have not seen a clear expression of these cases on the list, and felt it important
to describe them for those who may not have first hand involvement. It is true that 
under 2015-7, parties would be able to obtain more address space then presently 
allowed and to so do based upon an officer representation, so the risks that such 
a change would bring about should be carefully weighted by the community against
the situations outlined above which exist under the status quo.

Thanks,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN