[arin-ppml] Proposal to ban Leasing of IP Addresses in the ARIN region

[Owen DeLong]

> On Sep 22, 2021, at 10:40 , William Herrin <bill at herrin.us> wrote:
> 
> On Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 4:04 AM Owen DeLong via ARIN-PPML
> <arin-ppml at arin.net> wrote:
>> No signatory to any ARIN RSA is permitted by policy to engage in a recurring charge for addresses or a differentiated service charge based on the number if addresses issued to a customer. Addresses must be provided strictly as part of a contract for connectivity services and the number of addresses provided shall not, in any way, affect the cost of those connectivity services.
> 
> No, interfering with the prices a registrant charges its customers is
> way out of bounds. It would be out of bounds in the RSA let alone in
> the policy documents.
> 
> If you want to go this route, here's how you write the policy:
> 
> LIR-assigned number resources employed by an end user with a routing
> policy in which the LIR is not the primary network service provider
> handling the majority of the end user's associated network traffic do
> not count toward the LIR's efficient utilization of addresses.
> 
> It's not great but at least it's in-scope for number policy.

It also utterly fails to achieve the stated policy goal, namely the ban of address leasing by any LIR.

If we’re going to allow LIRs to charge for addresses, fine, let’s do that.

If we’re not, let’s not.

Tying the ability to (overcharge) for addresses to connectivity or some pretense indistinguishable from connectivity or forcing LIRs that do to use 8.4 transfers to have their expansions in RIPE rather than ARIN feels absurd to me.

Do I wish leasing and rent-seeking didn’t exist at all? Sure.

But that ship has clearly sailed and pretending it hasn’t achieves no legitimate policy purpose.

Owen