Lightly used IP addresses

Sun Aug 15 09:53:58 UTC 2010

On Aug 15, 2010, at 1:20 AM, David Conrad wrote:
> It has been depressing to watch participants in ARIN (in particular) suggest all will be well if people would just sign away their rights via an LRSA,
> ...

Actually, you've got it backwards. The Legacy RSA provides specific
contractual rights which take precedence over present policy or any
policy that might be made which would otherwise limit such rights: 
"In the event of any inconsistency between the Policies and this 
Legacy Agreement, the terms of this Legacy Agreement will prevail, 
including but not limited to those Policies adopted after this 
Legacy Agreement is executed."  Without signing an LRSA, it's just
status quo, which is also seems to fine option at present for those 
who like things they way they are.

The specific LRSA right that most folks are interested in include:
"ARIN will take no action to reduce the services provided for 
Included Number Resources that are not currently being utilized 
by the Legacy Applicant.", and additional the $100 annual fee,
and with an annual cap on any increases.  The Legacy RSA is a 
voluntary way for legacy block holders to have certainty regarding 
the registry services including WHOIS, in-addr, etc.  It's entirely
voluntary, for those who prefer to have contractual rights for an
otherwise uncertain situation.  

> Pragmatically speaking, it seems the most likely to be successful way of maintaining stability with the impending resource exhaustion state is to give up pretenses of being regulatory agency and concentrate on the role of being a titles registry. 

Focusing on becoming a title registry is easily done if the community 
adopts policy to such effect, but it is an exercise to reader whether
that increases or decreases stability depending on the exact policies.

The specified transfer policy that developed by the community allows 
those who needs addresses to receive them from anyone holding them, 
and keeps ARIN out of the financials of the transaction and focused 
on recording it.  Yes, we do require that the resources first be under 
RSA/LRSA, because we research each legacy block through that process 
to make sure we're not otherwise recording a hijacked address block 
as valid.

Pragmatically speaking, I would note that such validation is nearly the 
textbook role for a "title" registry, and attempts to record transfers
without first doing the historical scrub will nearly guarantee instability.

(Followups for this really should be to PPML.)

/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN