[arin-ppml] [EXT] Re: Open Petition for ARIN-prop-266: BGP Hijacking is an ARIN Policy Violation

[William Herrin]

On Wed, May 1, 2019 at 11:50 PM Fernando Frediani <fhfrediani at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Why people always believe they "own" IP address space and nobody can
> take it from them as if it was a router or a server purchased with a
> invoice and declared in their annual balance ?
>

Several reasons.

1. Revocation of a properly registered address space has never happened
before, at least not in North America. The few times any sort of revocation
has happened is when there was provable fraud in the -original-
application, ownership was claimed by someone who was provably acting
without the authorization of the original registrant, or periodic
registratino fees consented to under written contract with ARIN were not
paid for an extended period of time. Over ARIN's existence there have been
plenty of opportunities for ARIN to revoke addresses for other bad
behaviors including violations of the policy manual. They have always
declined to do so.

The legal Doctrine of Laches more or less says that a right not enforced is
a right you do not have, regardless of writings to the contrary. ARIN has
never enforced a claim incompatible with the registrants' ownership of
their IP addresses.

2. Prior to 1997, the documents associated with registration neither
expressed nor implied any right for the registry to revoke a registration
for any reason.

3. If it quacks like a duck, it's a duck. The registrant has exclusive
control of the block of the number resource to the extent that use by
anyone else on the Internet is universally held to be abusive. They can be
sold or rented without permission or attachment and bought with minimal
registration paperwork (or none if you're willing to operate on a contract
with the averred registrant rather than updating the registration).
Addresses are used in a manner that closely aligns with the common law
understanding of an intellectual property. For a court to find otherwise, a
litigant would have to affirmatively prove that this thing which quacks
like a duck is in fact a zebra. This has not been done and there is reason
to believe it is not doable.

That's why folks like me believe we own our IP addresses.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
Dirtside Systems ......... Web: <http://www.dirtside.com/>
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