On Thu, Apr 8, 2010 at 1:55 PM, Owen DeLong <owen@delong.com> wrote:
What, exactly do you find so onerous in the LRSA?
Owen,
ARIN's unilateral right under the LRSA to reclaim my addresses in the event of a dispute bugs me a tad, as does similar verbiage sprinkled throughout.
Let's clarify here, however... Nothing guarantees you that ARIN can not do so if you don't have any contract with them. There is a common fiction that ARIN somehow grants right to use or otherwise gives/transfers/leases/etc. Addresses. That is not the case. ARIN provides a REGISTRATION service which merely guarantees that neither ARIN, nor any of the other cooperating participants in the IANA/RIR system will register the same numbers to someone else. So, that clause really states that ARIN reserves the right to invalidate your registration if ARIN feels you are no longer playing by the rules under which that registration was granted. ARIN doesn't have the power to directly prevent you from using the address space. They merely have the ability to let the world know that it is no longer registered to you, and, the ability to register it to someone else. To the best of my knowledge, there is no legal reason ARIN could not do this with any legacy registration which is not the subject of an RSA or LRSA, as I do not believe there is a legal obligation for ARIN to provide services to customers without a service contract. I'm not saying that ARIN will or should do such a thing, but, signing the LRSA is about the only way to insure that ARIN can't do such a thing to your legacy resources. The "perceived" rights of legacy holders are dubious at best. The LRSA does not take any actual rights away, merely enumerates a very small number of the limitations that also exist without a contract.
Would it be equally onerous if ARIN simply stopped providing RDNS for you?
Probably not. SMTP is the only major service any more that cares. But that's immaterial; ending RDNS for legacy registrants has been an empty threat from the day the notion was first hatched.
Sure... I'm not advocating any such thing, either. The point being that while I think continuing to provide a free ride to IPv4 legacy holders is a good idea, there is no reason to continue that concept into the IPv6 world. I would like to see fee waivers for IPv6 initial assignment fees to legacy holders who sign the LRSA. I think that would be a good incentive for both the LRSA and IPv6 adoption. However, when I suggested that, there was some negative feedback from the community and I don't think the idea achieved clear consensus for or against. Owen