[arin-ppml] Deceased Companies?

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <CAMDXq5N_x84p4_6BKZKPemSLq2eWJJaGeXwo+fe3bwoSJ7d2AQ at mail.gmail.com>, 
Martin Hannigan <hannigan at gmail.com> wrote:

>> Similarly, when GlobalCrossing was bought by Level3, there was no
>> sudden requirement that every record within ARIN that used to say
>> "GlobalCrossing" now say "Level3" (I mean Qwest) (no wait, I mean
>> CenturyLink) (shoot, no, now I mean Lumen).
>>
>
>And those companies don't die.  They get adopted. In my $dayjob we still
>receive payments and do agreements with XO, MCI and Level3. They are indeed
>wholly owned by another, but the corporate entities continue to exist.
>Those records are likely to be valid in many cases. Untangling such vast
>enterprises is more expensive than simply changing who owns the shares and
>the branding. It is quite common from my view as a lord of telecom land.
>
>This is not a task for ARIN. Members will pay dearly for such a time waste.
>No thank you.

I agree.

I've raised two different issues in recent days and I should apologize
for having done that and for having possibly confused matters by doing so.

One issue is the question of whether or not ARIN should have some clear
notion of the identities of the benficial owners of any corporate member
that is *not* a publicly traded company.  (In the case of publicly traded
companies, I suspect that not even the SEC knows from one millisecond to
the next who all of the hundreds of thousands of individual shareholders
are.)

In the case of non-publicly-traded companies, I believe that there would
be a clear value in ARIN knowing, at the very least, that none of the
beneficial owners are either (a) convicted felons or (b) are on any
international sanctions list.  Having said that, I understand at least
some of the reasons why arranging things so that ARIN could know the identities
of all beneficial owners of all non-publicly-traded companies might be
controversial.  So let's just set that idea aside for the moment.

The other and entirely separate issue I have raised is whether or not ARIN
currently knows, or currently even cares to know whether or not any given
ARIN member still exists, legally speaking.

This, I believe, should not be in the least controversial.  What good is a
signed RSA agreement if the member is dead?  And is it a Good Thing or a
profoundly Bad Thing if unknown interlopers are usurping, without any
legal authority, the ARIN-issued number resources of a deceased person or
a deceased corporation?

There are a lot of things that ARIN should clearly not waste its time on.
Knowing whether its members are alive or dead is not one of them.


Regards,
rfg