On 4 Apr 2022, at 8:16 PM, John Gilmore <g...@toad.com<mailto:g...@toad.com>> wrote:
Let's not undermine one of the few remaining widely distributed (with no center) technical achievements behind the Internet -- the decentralized routing system. I'm on the board of a large legacy allocation that is deliberately NOT an ARIN (or other RIR) member. And I have a small address block of my own, ditto. ARIN doesn't provide authenticated RPKI entries for just anybody. You have to pay them for that service. And in order to pay them, you have to sign their contract. And if you sign that contract, ARIN can take away your legacy allocation -- anytime they decide it would be in their best interest. Whereas, if you don't sign, the courts have held that you have a *property right* in your IP addresses and they *belong* to you. As a result, most legacy address holders (a large fraction of the Internet addresses) have declined to sign such contracts, pay such bills, and thus can't be in the ARIN authenticated routing registry. Hello John - Your legal summary is patently incorrect; I’d be happy to discuss it anytime with you – in public or private as you prefer – but the short version is that courts have indeed held that a party can have an interest (such as bankruptcy estate or probate estate interest) in specific rights to Internet number blocks in the ARIN registry, but that doesn’t equate to rights to free-held property (i.e. property that one can dispose of independently of interests of other parties in the same address block entries, such as ARIN’s right to enforce the community-policies for transfers, specify the format and content of registry entries, etc.) The most often cited case in this regard is probably Nortel/Microsoft sale which did not proceed until the agreement was conditioned as ARIN required – reference [In re Nortel Networks, Inc., No. 09-10138, KG 2011 WL 110098, Docket # 5315, at 4 (Bankr. D. Del. 2011) (assignee’s interest limited to exclusive right to use)] To date ARIN hasn’t never been instructed to update our registry contrary to our community-developed policies, and in fact, courts have repeated enforced conditions on transfer in bankruptcy, probate, and other contexts that the parties involved must comply with ARIN’s policies. Feel free to reach out to any of the many IP address brokers out there <https://www.arin.net/resources/registry/transfers/stls/registered_facilitators/> and ask if you have any doubt on this... For years, ARIN has been deliberately limiting access to the RPKI registry as a lever to force people to sign one-sided contracts beneficial to ARIN. (They do the same lever thing when you sell an address block -- at ARIN, it loses its legacy status, requiring the recipient to pay annual rent to ARIN, and risk losing their block if political winds shift.) Let me make it a little simpler - ARIN’s RPKI services have been developed at the behest of its member community and are available to that same community who bear its costs. You may not like such decisions, but you certainly have the ability to get involved to change things, or even run for the member-elected ARIN Board of Trustees if you so choose. We recently even changed the membership structure recently so that any member with IPv4 or IPv6 resources (not just “ISPs”) can be a General Member and vote in the elections. In the end, we are not-for-profit membership organization and will be accountable to members (and the community) that get involved in the organization. Thanks! /John John Curran President and CEO American Registry for Internet Numbers
