John - you do not get it... First of all, I don't want your organization to have ANY policy at all. Being just a title company for IP blocks is well and good - and can be easily done at maybe 1% of your budget. Title companies do not tell people if they can buy or sell, they just record the current ownership. They do not create controversy or conflict - in fact, their sole reason for existence is to reduce expenses involved in figuring out who has rights to what. Secondly, if you have delusion that you somehow represent me (or other Internet users), get rid of that delusion. Simply because you don't. I didn't vote for you, and gave your organization no right to claim to have my consent - individually or collectively. I'm not bound by any of your policies, and, as a matter of fact, I have no say in them (and do not have a wish to participate). Writing a petition to have a policy changed is something a serf does towards his lord, so I'll spare you the embarrassment of reading what I have to say to anybody suggesting this to me. ARIN as a policy-making body exists solely due to cluelessness of telco management. If the execs had any clue, they'd realize that there is NO such thing as owning a block of IP addresses - the real object is the contractual right to send packets to that address block over their networks. Because their customers generally want universal connectivity, they are forced to cooperate with each other - but, as everybody in this age of NATs, firewalls, and Great Walls knows, universal connectivity is just a myth. Coverage in connectivity can (and should) be a competitive discriminator, rather than absolutist one-size-fits-all regulatory pipe dream. What they have done is gave control over this right to a third party for no good reason whatsoever. (Yes, Randy, it did seem like a good idea - but, just like any other idea involving giving some people policy-making powers, - it was bound to go sour and start serving interests of these people rather than the interests of subjects of their rule-making). ISPs can increase their revenues by selling this right rather than _paying_ to ARIN for being able to exercise this right. All it takes is a bunch of reciprocity agreements saying, essentially, "we'll carry yours if you carry ours". As soon as one large ISP figures that out, this particular political house of cards will go down, quickly. With due respect, --vadim John Curran wrote:
On Aug 13, 2010, at 4:35 PM, Randy Bush wrote:
How come ARIN has any say at all if A wants to sell and B wants to buy? Trying to fend off the imaginary monopolistic hobgoblin?
self-justification for arin's existence, flying people around to lotso meetings, fancy hotels, ...
at the rirs, income and control are more important than the health and growth of the internet. basically, the rirs are another case of seemed like a good idea at the time.
Vadim - We'll run the database anyway you (collectively) want us to... what policy would you prefer, and can you submit it as a proposal?
(and to answer Randy - the only control over the administration is based on the policies adopted. Reduce the corpus of applicable policy if that is your desire.)
/John
John Curran President and CEO ARIN