John Curran wrote:
We strongly encourage all legacy resource holders who have not yet signed an LRSA to cover their legacy resources to
Randy Bush <randy@psg.com> wrote:
consult a competent lawyer before signing an LRSA
Amen to that. ARIN's stance on legacy resources has traditionally been that ARIN would prefer to charge you annually for them, and then "recover" them (take them away from you) if you ever stop paying, or if they ever decide that you are not using them wisely. If you once agree to an ARIN contract, your resources lose their "legacy" status and you become just another sharecropper subject to ARIN's future benevolence or lack thereof. The change recently announced by John Curran will make the situation very slightly worse, by making ARIN's annual fees for legacy resources changeable at their option, instead of being capped by contract. ARIN management could have changed their offer to be better, if they wanted to attract legacy users, but they made an explicit choice to do the opposite. By contrast, RIPE has developed a much more welcoming stance on legacy resources, including: * retaining the legacy status of resources after a transfer or sale * allowing resources to be registered without paying annual fees to RIPE (merely paying a one-time transaction fee), so that later non-payment of annual fees can't be used as an excuse to steal the resources. * agreeing that RIPE members will keep all their legacy resources even if they later cease to be RIPE members You are within the RIPE service area if your network touches Europe, northern Asia, or Greenland. This can be as simple as having a rented or donated server located in Europe, or as complicated as running a worldwide service provider. If you have a presence there, you can transfer your worldwide resources out from under ARIN policies and put them under RIPE's jurisdiction instead. Moving to RIPE is not an unalloyed good; Europeans invented bureaucracy, and RIPE pursues it with vigor. And getting the above treatment may require firmly asserting to RIPE that you want it, rather than accepting the defaults. But their motives are more benevolent than ARIN's toward legacy resource holders; RIPE honestly seems to want to gather in legacy resource holders, either as RIPE members or not, without reducing any of the holders' rights or abilities. I commend them for that. Other RIRs may have other good or bad policies about legacy resource holders. As Randy proposed, consult a lawyer competent in legacy domain registration issues before making any changes. John