On 30-jun-04, at 6:47, william(at)elan.net wrote:
Not an ARIN example but when KPNQwest went out of business, the situation was as you desribe and it would have been difficult to everybody to quickly renumber so their PA assigned customer ip blocks with assistance of RIPE became PI blocks (at least this is how I understood it, people in europe can correct me if this is not right). So the precidents do exist, but they involve having RIR take over the block.
One comment: the moment the KPNQwest network was turned off was a long time coming. (And a side note: KPNQ customers made some final, fairly big payments for the express purpose of keeping the network running (this money was supposed to go to the power company, AFAIK), but the banks just intercepted this money and kept it. The court didn't think anything wrong with this.)