LET'S JUST GO AROUND

[Karl Auerbach]

> It would *definitely* be 'restraint of trade' if you can't get a /19
> from the NIC until you're "big enough"...

It's my feeling that ARIN itself would be pretty safe from this sort of
complaint if they:

	- Have a well articulated policy about this

	- Express that policy clearly to applicants for address space
	  *before* fees are paid and let the applicants know the risks
	  of getting an address that some ISPs won't route.

	- Have a well expressed and applied conflict-of-interest policy
	  for their relationships with ISPs.  (As usual, I'm not
	  expressing this very well... what I'm trying to get at is that
	  there are a lot of potential ISP relationships with ARIN due
	  to BoT and advisory council memberships, and we need to prevent
	  even the appearance that ARIN is, in-effect, an ISP-owned body.)

As for the ISPs that block -- well, I think that they may eventually have
a lot of explaining to do.  The reason for this is that the incremental
cost of carring a route for a /24 is the same as for a /8.  If the ISPs
want to be "common carriers" (and hence obtain many protections against
being liable for the content of the traffic they carry) they may have to
fairly offer their services to all comers.

		--karl--