[arin-ppml] Change of Use and ARIN (was: Re: AFRINIC And The Stability Of The Internet Number Registry System)

[Mike Burns]

>From my perspective as a bidder against Microsoft in that Nortel auction, ARIN transfer policies were completely ignored until the auction winner was announced. The proposed sale agreements we were using in our bidding disregarded any transfer policies at all. You may remember these were all legacy blocks, none of which were even registered to Nortel. The judge had decided these were transferrable assets belonging to the bankrupt entity, and could be sold. Our assumption was that the judge would order the blocks to be registered to the winner, but alas we never got to test that assumption as losing bidders. Microsoft passed a needs test and ARIN declared the transfer policy-compliant. 

It's true that it was the first true public IPv4 sale, and was seminal in that regard.

It's a disingenuous to say that ARIN transfer policy drove the market, I think that's cart-before-the-horse revisionism. If anything, even after the transfer ARIN had to be dragged into a modern transfer policy and significant RSA changes.

Regards,
Mike




-----Original Message-----
From: Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com> 
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2021 12:14 PM
To: Michel Py <michel at arneill-py.sacramento.ca.us>
Cc: Mike Burns <mike at iptrading.com>; Fernando Frediani <fhfrediani at gmail.com>; arin-ppml at arin.net
Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] Change of Use and ARIN (was: Re: AFRINIC And The Stability Of The Internet Number Registry System)



> On Sep 5, 2021, at 12:43 PM, Michel Py <michel at arneill-py.sacramento.ca.us> wrote:
> 
>>> Michel Py wrote:
>>> The leasing thing makes it worse, though. Instead of having the 
>>> recipient be accountable for the use of these addresses, it shifts that to who leases them. It's a smoke screen.
> 
>> Owen DeLong wrote :
>> How is this different from any other LIR? It’s a provider-assigned 
>> set of addresses, regardless of the financial and/or connectivity 
>> arrangement (or not) between the provider of the addresses and the customer using the addresses.
> 
> The timing, and the way business and justice work in other regions.

I’m afraid I’d need more clarity than is provided above to understand your answer.

> Oh I imagine it took a lot of back and forth between everyone, but it was the right thing to do. How long did it take between the time the process was initiated and the first justice decision ?
> 
> Not being directly involved, I was under the impression that the Nortel / Microsoft thing was some kind of a catalyst to making it happen.

To the best of my recollection, Nortel wasn’t even bankrupt yet when the transfer policy work was initiated. It may well have been the first court case, but I do not recall it being a topic of discussion in any of the debates surrounding transfer policy prior to adoption.

Owen