[arin-ppml] Deceased Companies?

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In my my immediately prior email on this topic I neglected to mention three
important and entirely relevant points.

First, I should clarify the reason for my interest in this topic of dead
resource-holding organizations.  As some but not all here may be aware,
I personally have invested quite a lot of time and effort over the years
in finding and exposing Bad Actors on the Internet.  In the many years
that I have been doing this entirely uncompensated work, I have quite
certainly noticed what appears to me to be a marked correlation between
dead legal entities and the various kinds of Bad Actors that I seek and
too often find on the Internet.  Based on that, I cannot help but believe
that opportunities for mischief on the Internet would be reduced, to the
benefit of all, if ARIN and the other RIRs were to be somewhat more pro-
active in recycling the number resources of dead entities.

Second, with respect to the rather superficial legal analysis included in
my prior email, that analysis was and is hampered somewhat by a key point
of ignorance on my part.  Specifically, it is unclear to me if ARIN staff
(or policy) requires that resource-holding entities sign and return a fresh
new RSA... presumably having the latest and greatest RSA version number...
at every point in time when such an entity has requsted (or is assigned)
some new allocation of number resources.  Can any kind soul enlighten me
on this point?

This is no small matter.  In relation specifically to CENTA-3, if ARIN staff
has been in the habit of giving new resource allocations to old entities
_without_ simultaneously requiring the old entities to enter into a fresh
new RSA agreement, then the only signed RSA agreement that is legally
binding upon this now-defunct entity, CENTA-3, is whichever version of
the RSA was current as of 2006-08-22.  If on the other hand, ARIN staff
has been consistant if requiring a fresh new RSA to be signed at each
point in time where new resources were granted, then the specific RSA
version which was current as of 2011-10-04 is the one that is legally
binding upon both parties.

This makes a difference, because the exact wording of what is now Section
10 of the most recent RSA version (12.0) most probably has changed, over
time, and may have been markedly different in 2006 than it was in 2011
and vise versa.

Third and lastly, I am compelled to express my profound dismay that ARIN
staff appears to be playing a somewhat elaborate game of "hide the ball"
when it comes to making available older / non-current versions of the RSA.
Reasonably diligent efforts to find these older RSA versions, by me, and
on the ARIN web site, were consistantly met with either web site "not
found" errors or by redirections to the current and latest version (12.0)
of the RSA, which is not at all what I was seeking.

Needless to say, the inability to obtain copies of older versions of the RSA
makes it literally impossible to form any reasoned opinion about what various
organizations, dead or otherwise, may or may not have been contractually
bound to do or not do.

Frankly, this all seems rather deliberate.  There are significant numbers of
historical documents available in the "vault" section of the ARIN web site,
however historical versions of what is arguably THE most important ARIN
document of all, i.e. the RSA, do not appear to be available, either in the
"vault" section of ARIN's web site, on in any other part of the ARIN web site.

To add further insult to this injury, I asked an old friend to contact the
ARIN billing department on my behalf to specifically and explicitly request
copies of the old RSA versions.  He did this, in the first instance, by phone,
and he was instructed to send the request via email to the billing department,
which he then did.  More than 48 hours later, no response whatsoever has
been received to this request, not even an acknowledgement of reciept.

I can well understand why ARIN staff and management may wish to have the
average Joe Schmo looking only at the most current version of the RSA,
but deliberately making older versions of this key document unavalable,
even to researchers, is unacceptable and should be rectified forthwith.


Regards,
rfg