The RSA contract ARIN offers registrants boils down to this: so long
as you pay us, you can use IP addresses the way we say you can. The
way we say you can is subject to change at any time according to the
change process which we can replace at any time at the pleasure of our
board of trustees who are chosen through a process that they can
change at any time.
There's not even anything in the contract that
ARIN's application of policy can be restricted to the policies in
effect at the time the issuance of the number resources or that those
policies won't change in a manner which results in the revocation of
those resources when used as represented to ARIN that they would be.
ARIN's NRPM contract is devoid of any -meaningful- protections for the
registrant; all rights are reserved to ARIN.
I hope you understand why I would choose ambiguous rights over no rights at all.
On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 7:16 AM Tom Beecher <beecher@beecher.cc> wrote:
> Allocations made before the RIR systems were created have no
> contracts or covenants attached. Allocations made from the RIRs do.
>
> The 'rights' claimed by legacy holders are therefore unenumerated ;
> their argument is essentially 'nothing says I don't have these rights,
> so I say I do'.
Not because I "say" I do but because legal precedent has said that
folks in roughly comparable situations in the past did. Nothing
exactly the same or there wouldn't be any ambiguity but similar enough
for me to think I have rights.
> This leads to the current situation, where the legacy
> holders don't really want any case law or contractual agreements
> to enumerate what rights they may (or may not) have, because if
> that happens, they would be prevented from asserting some new
> right in the future. We all I think acknowledge that technology
> often races out in front of the law, this situation is no different.
I'd be happy to have case law or a contract that clarifies the
situation, wherever that might end up. I won't force the matter unless
ARIN puts me in a position where it's either go to court or knuckle
under. Despite the war of words, ARIN has shown no signs of doing so.
As for a contract, if ARIN offered an acceptable contract or was
willing to negotiate toward an acceptable contract, I would as happily
clarify my rights that way. To my perspective (and I've said this many
times in the past) it is ARIN who would prefer not to have the matter
clarified as it would certainly be clarified that ARIN has less power
over the legacy registrations than their RSA contract requests and
elements of that clarification could spill over into the contracted
resources.
The RSA contract ARIN offers registrants boils down to this: so long
as you pay us, you can use IP addresses the way we say you can. The
way we say you can is subject to change at any time according to the
change process which we can replace at any time at the pleasure of our
board of trustees who are chosen through a process that they can
change at any time. There's not even anything in the contract that
ARIN's application of policy can be restricted to the policies in
effect at the time the issuance of the number resources or that those
policies won't change in a manner which results in the revocation of
those resources when used as represented to ARIN that they would be.
ARIN's NRPM contract is devoid of any -meaningful- protections for the
registrant; all rights are reserved to ARIN.
I hope you understand why I would choose ambiguous rights over no rights at all.
Regards,
Bill Herrin
--
For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/