----- Original Message -----
From: "John Curran" <jcurran@arin.net>
Mr. Rubi -
I'm sorry if my answer is not clear.
If your question was: "What is the source of ARIN's legal authority to manage the ARIN WHOIS database?"
then answer is that the database is managed as part of ARIN's mission, per policies established by the community.
If you're trying to ask a different question, I'm more than happy to answer, but I'd ask that you be more explicit.
I strongly suspect that his question is actually "Does ARIN have any enforceable legal authority to compel an entity to cease using a specific block of address space, absent a contract?" I suspect the actual answer will turn out to depend on whether courts construe that as a property right or not. The situation is analogous to that concerning telephone numbers, and that position has changed over time, in that arena, as I understand it. Cheers, -- jra