[arin-ppml] Deceased Companies?

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:

>ARIN has not been directed by the community in any policy to embark on a general review
>of all entities in the ARIN database looking for ?dead and defunct corporate entities? - so if
>this is what you are suggesting, then you are correct - such a task would be very low priority
>indeed.

I should clarify that I am _not_ proposing and that I shall not be proposing that ARIN
staff should proactively launch a search for dead/defunct/dissolved ARIN resource-holding
customers.  Indeed there seems to be no need for that, as I and other volunteers can do
that job.  (I have already found over a dozen such defunct entities that remain ARIN
resource holders, just by surveying a small, semi-random sample of ARIN IPv4 resource
customers.)

The problem isn't finding these things.  The problem is that ARIN clearly doesn't want to
*do* anything about these cases, even when ARIN is informed about them.  The example of
CENTA-3, which ARIN sat on, and which it is still sitting on, with no action for nearly
two years now makes that altogether clear and obvious.

I stopped working on my random sample survey after awhile because it started to just be
ridiculous.  Frankly, it was like shooting fish in a barrel.  These things are not at
all hard to find, and there are a lot of them.

There are some 31,000+ direct resource customers of ARIN represented within the current
ARIN WHOIS data base.  And that isn't even counting the organizations that hold only
ASNs but no IP address resources.  If a mere 10% of those are legally dissolved now,
then that means that some 3,100 of them could have their IP block resources reclaimed
and eventually redistributed to the 407 legit and legal organizations that are currently
sitting patiently on the ARIN Wait List, thus easly eliminating the Wait List altogether,
and several times over.  That would be an Absolute Good.

And lest anyone incorrectly think that only 10% of ARIN current direct resource customers
are dead, defunct, and dissolved former corporate entities, allow me to here dissuade
you of any such notion.  Based upon my own very limited random sample, my conclusion is
that the true figure may be *conservatively* estimated to be much higher, and in fact
somewhere well north of 25%.  (I was going to say "well north of 30%" but if I did,
none of you would believe me, so let's just call it 25%.)

But of course, none of that matters so long as ARIN staff have been given the order to
do nothing, even about the dead companies they are told about.


Regards,
rfg