On Mon, 28 Apr 2003, Daniel Golding wrote:
While its certainly wrongb to steal IPs like this, some of the blame must go to the RIRs. They should be repo-ing this space. I realize they engage in much handwrining over their "lack of authority", but authority to route address space is, for all intents and purposes, given by those who actually do the routing. Furthermore, ARIN has a large warchest for defending against legal challenges.
ARIN needs to repo any space that has been advertised for a reasonable length of time, and reissue it.
Should any of the ISP community hold any responsibility to help the RIR's pull this space back when they are hijacked? I would think ARIN/RIPE/APNIC would like to see ISP's email them blocks that are hijacked so they can reclaim them, or put them into a holding pen while they attempt to contact the owners... (then reclaim if no contacts can be made) -Chris