[arin-ppml] Legacy number resources in the ARIN region (was: Re: Inter-RIR transfer Policy reciprocity with Afrinic_Resource Transfer Policy proposal)

[William Herrin]

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 11:35 AM John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> On 12 Oct 2020, at 1:37 PM, JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <jordi.palet at consulintel.es> wrote:
>> For example, I can’t imposse the condition to legacy resources transfered
>> from AFRINIC to ARIN to lose the legacy status, because that’s against ARIN policy.

Hi Jordi,

There's a rather complex set of politics in play. For the cross-region
transfer policies John offered good advice:

> ARIN wouldn’t find a policy proposal that required (or prohibited) “legacy status” treatment for transferred resources to be compatible


That having been said, you should be aware that there's some political
spin going on here. Let me offer an outside perspective.

ARIN's treatment of legacy resources boils down to: hands off. No
money changes hands. ARIN does not attempt to forcibly reclaim legacy
resources. ARIN acknowledges changes in contact information and DNS
records. That's about it. The behavior has not been contractually
normalized but it has been consistent for near a quarter century.

For transfers, the rule is that ARIN registrants _receive_ number
resources under the standard RSA contract which applies the policies
in the NRPM. Neither document makes much distinction between legacy
and non-legacy resources and together they provide no mechanism by
which the new registrant can have an address block treated in the same
manner ARIN treats legacy number resources.

Where a recipient has sufficient legal standing to make trouble for
ARIN, the rule is broken. For example, government entities in the U.S.
are allowed to negotiate custom contracts with ARIN removing terms
they find objectionable. Another example: in the Microsoft/Nortel
matter ARIN negotiated an alternate contract with Microsoft rather
than allow the bankruptcy court to proceed to rule on whether ARIN
could be compelled to transfer a legacy registration without one.

This is why both requiring and prohibiting some form of legacy status
would result in incompatible policies.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William Herrin
bill at herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/