Can a customer take IP's with them?

David Schwartz davids at webmaster.com
Wed Jun 23 05:40:13 UTC 2004



> In other words, customer is asking a court to rule whether or not IP space
> should be portable, when an industry-supported organization (ARIN) has
> made policy that the space is in fact not portable. It can be further
> argued that the court could impose a TRO that would potentially negatively
> affect the operation of my network.

	A court will likely decide this based upon the terms of your contract and
what the court thinks is fair. They will likely give very little
consideration to common practice or ARIN's rules.

> Another VERY important issue to bring up: If customer is granted the legal
> right to continue to use IP space that is registered to NAC by ARIN, NAC
> runs into the very serious problem of being liable for all of the Spam
> that could be generated by the customer and all of the RBLs that the
> carrier may be added to [that of course will effect all of NAC's
> customers] with no ability to revoke the IP space to protect itself. This
> has to potential to effect the NAC network in a catastrophic manner.

	You'll just have to explain to people that the traffic didn't originate on,
terminate on, or transit your network and therefore there is no
justification for holding you responsible. When arguing against the TRO in
court, make sure to point out that this TRO would make you responsible for
behavior over which you have no control. However, the court will likely find
that failure to grant the TRO puts a greater hardship on your
soon-to-be-former customer than granting the TRO puts on you.

	Courts do not look well on artificial attempts to penalize a customer for
changing providers. Lock in is considered anti-competitive. They will likely
see your revocation of the IP addresses (or failure to offer them separately
for a reasonable fee) as a case of lock in. Standard industry practice,
AFAIK, is to allow customers to keep their IP addresses for a reasonable
amount of time unless you have always had a policy of not allowing customers
to advertise any of your IP space through any other providers ever.

	IANAL, seek competent legal advice from a lawyer with experience in this
area. I'm sure you can work out some sort of compromise where you let them
keep using their IP space for a reasonable period of time (3 months? 6
months?) and they renumber in that time. I'm fairly sure they don't expect
to keep your IPs forever and I'm fairly sure you don't need them back
immediately.

	DS





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