In message <CAEqgTWZcQ2O_nV_qMXXPOormSEuv9uJYZW5f3j7dgfKjoC3fSw@mail.gmail .com> Noah <n...@neo.co.tz> wrote:
>Here is the deal and I beg to be corrected by folks to that end. > >>{... stuff about AFRINIC legal ownership snipped...} I am not qualified to comment on any of this, as I have not read the relevant documents, nor am I an attorney. I can only repeat what I already said about the ownership, which was the impression I was given by other knowledgable sources. (It may have been just plain wrong.) >> (I tried once to calculate the total current market value of all of the >> IPv4 address space that AFRINIC had been gifted with at its inception. >> The final esitimate I arrived at was something in excess of a quarter >> of a billion dollars, USD. But I think that I may have left out a extra >> zero someplace, because a single AFRINIC member currently owns over $150 >> million USD worth of non-legacy AFRINIC IPv4 address space.) > >The very reason we must be conservative about how we manage those small >ammounts of limited numbers IANA allocated to the region so as to advance >internet infrastructure here. There are many reasons to be "conservative" about the world's dwindling supply of IPv4 addresses. Like petrochemicals extracted from the earth, the stuff may flow freely and abundantly now, even to the point where we all feel free to squander what remains, but someday our profligate human nature will, I'm sure, come back to haunt us, and we will wake up with a hell of a hangover. Ardent proponents of IPv6 will no doubt disagree with this view, but I do believe that their views are still influenced more by hope than by current day-to-day reality on the ground. The proof of IPv4's ongoing importance is visible everwhere, for those that would but look for it. Speaking from my own direct experience, of which I have a great deal, 99 spammers out of 100 still to this day rely exclusively on IPv4 for the simple and obvious reason that this maximizes their connectivity to the places they wish to spam. Also, Mr. Cohen, Mr. Uerlings, Mr. Byaruhanga and an assortment of other Internet miscreants and ne'er-do-wells, who shall for the time being remain nameless, have not gone to the extraordinary lengths they have all gone to in order to gather unto themselves, by hook or by crook, large hunks of IPv4 space just for their health. For many purposes, IPv4 is still the only game in town. And by the way, yes, I do believe that I slipped a digit when I was trying to calculate the total value of all of the IPv4 address space that was gifted to AFRINIC by the other RIRs at the time of its inception, and that a more accurate assesment of the total current open market value of these assets likely exceeds $2.5 billion USD. And rather humorously, the various RIRs, including but not limited to AFRINIC have somehow persuaded, and continue to persuade their respective financial auditors to simply close their eyes and look the other way whenever the subject of these most valuable assets comes up. You can see this for yourself in past AFRINIC auditor-generated financial statments, e.g. the one I looked at from 2015. Nowhere are these most valuable assets of AFRINIC or the other RIRs ever even considered to be assets... a most astonishing example of what would appear on the face of it to be gross professional malpractice on the part of the auditors, the size of which dwarfs even the national budgets of several entire non-trivial countries. Arguably, it is this sort of "fantasy accounting" that is at the heart of many issues, both the AFRINIC thefts, which went on for years without any of the accountants even noticing, and also the self-evident problem of the well-connected in each region being granted valuable IPv4 allocations.= .. sometimes huge ones... all via an entirely opaque process, while other deserving candidates for that same space must go begging in the streets for even small IPv4 allocations. This sort of quiet and behind the scenes favoritism would have been both fine and unremarkable in the old Soviet Union, but if we consider ourselves to be capitalists, then this system cannot be viewed as anything other than a quasi-governmental invitation to graft and influence peddling= . (And despite the selective blindness of the audittors, there is a LOT of money at stake.) But I digress. >> Perhaps. The whole matter is shrouded in what I feel is unfortunate >> and actually ridiculous secrecy. It seems that neither the AFRINIC >> board, nor Eddy, nor the Governance Counsel... whose purpose apart >> from the Board is still an utter mystery to me... nor even Mr. Cohen >> himself feel in the least bit obliged to let anyone else in on the >> Big Secret. > >I wont comment much here since the issue is before court and I have limit= ed >knowledge of the proceedings but I trust that the CEO and his team are >working this. Very nearly everyone has "limited knowledge of the proceedings'. That was my point. One would think that the goals and purposes of one side or the other in this epic conflict would be served by going public with the relevant legal filings, but apparently they themselves do not feel that to be the case. To say that this arouses some deep suspicions for me personally would be an understatement. At the end of the day, will AFRINIC elect to cut a secret backroom deal with Cohen, e.g. to let him keep some portion of what he has stolen? Or will they do as ARIN did back in 2008, make the thief give up what he has stolen, but then find a different way to reward him, like say, giving him an amount of legitimately allocated IPv4 space equivalent to 1/4th of the total of what he stole? That is, as I understand it, what happened in this case back in 2008, because ARIN was too afraid to litigate the matter against the thief: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2008/04/a_case_of_network_identity_the_1.html >> (I am being neither rude nor insulting to repeat these widely known >> facts here. The status of both Mauritius and Seychelles as safe >> havens for all manner of crooked international dealings is something >> that anyone with a web browser can easily verify for himself or herself= .) > >In your humble opinion ofcourse :-) since I havent done my homework to that >effect. I invite you to do so. The ongiong status of both Mauritius and Seychelles as safe havens for all manner of financial chicanery and skullduggery is in no sense a secret. If google doesn't get you there let me know, and I will be more than happy to provide numerous links to authoritativeo material, all of it entirely public. >> Mr. Cohen seems to be of the opinion that any -abandoned- legacy >> blocks thus have a legal status similar to abandoned sea vessels under >> international maritime law,... >> >> I personally disagree with this view, and believe that it has no basis >> in law, anywhere. > >The only way to fix this historical mistake especially for the AFRINIC >region is for us to ensure that legacy space looses the legacy status after >all the holders enjoy RIR services to the cost of resource members. This notion has been discussed and even litigated in other regions, most notabley in the ARIN region. It is *not* legally tenable, so you should forget about it. Legacy blocks are legacy blocks, and evermore shall remain so. What is less clear is the legal authority of Regional Internet Registries to simply stop providing support services, specifically WHOIS entries and reverse DNS delegation, in exchange for exactly zero dollars and zero cents, which is the current going rate in all regions for keeping either / both abandoned legacy blocks and live legacy blocks in the WHOIS and in the reverse DNS zone files, even if those two forms of ongoing upkeep only amount to the Internet equivalent of life support. In this sense, the RIRs are effectively being asked and/or expected to operate as charities, and although this may have all been part of the plan at the time the various RIRs were formed, times change, and I personally am not aware of any legal impediment that would prevent any RIR from requiring some maintenance fees... perhaps minimal, perhaps astronomical... from the legacy holders in exchange for ongoing WHOIS and reverse DNS delegation. It all comes back again to money, and the deliberate and selective blindness upon which this whole (RIR) system has been built over the past 23 years. The cracks in this delusional fantasy are staring to show, and like pretty much everything else in this capitalist world, sooner or later, everything will, in the end, end up, as we say here "on a paying basis", i.e. no more freebies. This is the inevitable and unavoidable end-game. The now self-evident problems generated by the "attractive nuisances" that are abandoned legacy blocks would have all worked theselves out long ago if the purported legal block owners had simply been asked to pay an annual fee of a mere ten cents (USD) for annual upkeep (of the WHOIS). Some of these companies have been dead for 25+ years! Thus, in those cases, where there is no one who even lays a claim (and thus no one who is even willing to pay the ten cent annual fee), after say, 3 years or so, then the block should be reclaimed. This is not rocket science, and everyone who knows anything about "keepalive" packets should have no trouble understanding the simple concept here. The ten cent annual fee is, in this context, simply a proxy for a sort of liveness check. No new contracts need be involved... just annual payment of ten cents. >> I firmly believe that -all- RIRs are, as we speak, hiding a whole lot >> of insider profiteering and other mischief, both past and present, >> behind a convenient wall of "corporate confidentiality" rules that >> insure that only the insiders know, or will ever know, why certain >> parties are rewwarded with valuable IP space while others are not >> so fortunate. > >Some believe the RIR system should just be some book keeper while they >profit from leasing resources that are meant to be put to use based on >need-basis to build the net which goes of to affects lives positively. See above regarding accounting. All of history shows that the best way to insure that something will be well used is to put a price on it. (And this is why, even thouugh I tend strongly towards the liberal end of the spectrum, I am against the proposal by our Senator Bernie Sanders to make college tuition free. Doing do would make a college degree essentially worthless, which it already alomost is due to the fact that even intelligent doorstops are currently able to get government grants and loans to attend college here in the U.S.) The only way to -actually- insure that IPv4 addresses will go to those who will make the most serious and thoughtful use of them is to auction them all off to the higest bidder. Every other appoach is just a cover story for favoritism, nepotism, and insider trading. (And this statement is by no means a selective criticism, on my part, of just AFRINIC. I have long held the same opinion also with respect to all five of the Regional Internet Registries.) If it is desired, for political and/or social reasons, that AFRINIC IPv4 addresses should actually be awarded to African entities and individuals. an idea that I myself support even more than most Africans, it seems... then fine... add that geographic restriction as a requirement on all bidders. Problem solved! (Funny fact: Conducting a geographically restricted auction of AFRINIC IPv4 addresses would result in substantially *more* of these valuable resources going to serve the needs of the continent than is currently the case, because at present, nobody is even patying attention to, let alone enforcing, *any* geographic restrictions relative to the holders or new recipients of "AFRINIC" addresses... a sad commentary on the single most glaring failure of AFRINIC to date, i.e. its inability and/or unwillingness to do anything specific to insure that it is actually serving *African* needs, specifically, rather than serving the needs of fast-buck interlopers, carpetbaggers, and profiteers from other regions.) Regards, rfg _______________________________________________ Community-Discuss mailing list Community-Discuss@afrinic.net https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/community-discuss