Bill –
From a great height or distance, your “bottom line” summary of a some form of status quo probably
appears accurate.
(I am unfortunately much closer and see quite a bit a of detail lost in it; for example, we have been
enforcing different community-developed transfer policies that have changed over the years, and
that has very real-world implications for those who wish monetize their excess number resources –
similarly, we revoke legacy resources from parties who have hijacking or otherwise surreptitiously
obtained them so that the proper party can recover their resources, etc. These activities routinely
take place today and are based on application of policies that did not exist 25 years ago to all of
the number resources in the registry - legacy number resources included.)
We have had parties litigate to prevent application of community policy to their legacy number
resources and they have never prevailed to date – ARIN continues to operate the registry
according to the community-developed policies in the region. Indeed, this record of success is
likely just as much the result of the community not creating burdensome policy obligations on
resource holders (such an approach is particularly prudent when it comes to legacy resource
holders since many have not updated their contact information over the years and therefore
the ability to reliably inform them of any new obligations is a rather reasonable concern.)
The ARIN policy development process is open to all and transparent in operation, and ARIN
operates the registry in accordance to the developed policies. I am not aware of any obligations
of ARIN that prevent us from doing so or might even remotely suggest that any party be immune
from such policies, but can say without any doubt that the US government expects our developed
policies to define how the Internet numbers "are managed and allocated within the North American
region.”
To the extent that the community continues to be reasonable in its obligations on number resource
holders in the region, we may indeed see a lack of contentious outcomes (and continuity of what
you may perceive as an apparent “status quo”) – but that only means that ARIN will continue enforce
the policy – including as it evolves – for all number resources in the registry - just we do today. Folks
who have any concerns about the potential of policy developed by this community affecting their IP
number resources are advised to participate in the open policy development process (you can find
Thanks!
/John
John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers
On Fri, Sep 16, 2022 at 12:47 PM John Curran <
jcurran@arin.net> wrote:
Again, to make sure there is 100% clarity: we have consistently ended up settling with orders
that recognize ARIN’s ability to operate the registry according to the community-developed
policy, including the application of that policy to legacy address blocks. ARIN simply doesn’t
settle absent those terms, as it is fundamental principle of our inception that this community
can set the policies used to administer the registry for this region.
Bottom line:
* There is a status quo for ARIN's relationship with the legacy registrants.
* It hasn't materially changed since ARIN's inception a quarter century ago.
* ARIN has indicated no intention of changing it.
* Were ARIN's behavior to materially drift from the status quo, they
would be sued with an uncertain outcome.
You want to dispute that last item, we can go another ten rounds on
it, but what's the point? Nothing has changed since the last time we
debated on the PPML list: In 25 years no one has successfully induced
ARIN to act contrary to the status quo and in 25 years no one has
successfully challenged ARIN on the status quo.
Summarizing the status quo:
* ARIN continues to report the legacy registrations.
* Legacy registrants do not pay ARIN for anything associated with the
legacy registrations.
* Legacy registrants change POCs and RDNS servers associated with
legacy registrations at their pleasure.
* ARIN will not record a transfer of a legacy resource to another
registrant absent ARIN's current approved contracts.
* ARIN provides "new" services (developed after ARIN's inception) to
legacy registrants only where those services directly replace
functionality that has been retired. For example, the Web UI replaces
the old email forms so it's provided to legacy registrants but RPKI is
entirely new so it is not.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
--
For hire.
https://bill.herrin.us/resume/