Curtis:
There is no need to call it hijacking.
[ ... ]
The Heretic Responds:
Why not call it hijacking? That is exactly what it appears to be. NANOG nor the IETF has the right to judge the motives of address space holders and the holder of the address space has no legal nor moral obligation to contact the providers of services.
Hijacking is actually a "kind and polite" term, it seems. What the "Self-proclaimed Omnipotent Crusaders and Saviors of the Fate of Routing" seem to forget is that they do not control the world IP address space; but they sure would like the world to believe have been "Blessed with the Right from the Holy Grail of IP" to act without remorse "for the cause". [ ... and so on ... and on ... and on ... and on ... ]
Hi Tim, Maybe you should reread my entire message to see what I actually suggested doing. I suggested some better methods of contacting the owner of the route based on traceroute and AS path. I also tried to point out (and tried to clarify in the flame of myself) that if there is no route to traceroute or get an AS path from there is no need to reclaim anything for the sake of reducing the routing table size. So if you keep that in mind and you only reclaim address space for people who you have been able to contact and agreed to give it back, then surely you must agree that this is justifiable action. There is a gray area where you cannot contact someone announcing a route even going through providers on the path and making public announcements asking for a contact and sending mail to root and postmaster, hostmaster, (guest? :), etc. I seriously doubt we will end up with a lot of these and so ignoring them is probably the best thing to do. If we do encounter a lot of them and want to discuss what to do about it you are welcome to call this hijacking if you like. Curtis