A paper LOA is a legally binding document, an IRR record is an IRR record.

Falsifying an LOA that is transmitted digitally is wire fraud and can basically be handed right over to a DA for injunction and prosecution.

Falsifying IRR records on the other hand leaves more work for the ISP's lawyers to walk a judge (and jury) through the entire purpose and use of that system, as opposed to "here's a super important sheet of paper that they lied on case closed".

-Matt

On Mon, Feb 26, 2024 at 11:57 AM Seth Mattinen via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org> wrote:

Why do companies still insist on, or deploy new systems that rely on
paper LOA for IP and ASN resources? How can this be considered more
trustworthy than RIR based IRR records?

And I'm not even talking about old companies, I have a situation right
now where a VPS provider I'm using will no longer use IRR and only
accepts new paper LOAs. In the year 2024. I don't understand how anyone
can go backwards like that.

~Seth