Clarification: ARIN plays, at most, an advisory role during appropriate assignment *disputes*. That last word is very important :>
DS writes:
Nonetheless, ARIN is in the business of requiring compliance with its policies as a condition of IP address allocations.
In the real world ARIN only looks at existing assignments to judge the worthiness of an additional address space request. It doesn't look at nor care about non-existent assignments.
DS writes:
Third parties can make reasonable arguments that they have standing to litigate these requirements on the grounds that the requirements were intended to benefit the public in general and hence they are intended beneficiaries.
ARIN plays, at most, an advisory role to upstream/downstreams vis-a-vis appropriate assignments. It does not get involved with legal disputes nor does it ever directly instruct businesses how to conduct their affairs
Sure: organizations have successfully gotten more appropriate assignments from upstreams by thrusting ARIN policies in front of an obstinate upstream's face. Good.
But those policies in no way preclude an upstream from taking away downstream assignments - especially in the case of this thread, where the customer/upstream relationship was terminated.
Can we please stop this non-argument now? I agree with what you've said: ARIN policies are good for those trying to obtain appropriate assignments. But the more basic argument of "will I make an assignment to my downstream" or "will I allow this assignment to remain in effect" has nothing to do with what you're talking about.
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