Kremen VS Arin Antitrust Lawsuit - Anyone have feedback?

Jack Bates jbates at brightok.net
Fri Sep 8 21:25:29 UTC 2006


Niels Bakker wrote:
> Address space policy has always been the result of a community 
> consensus. Just because that consensus has shifted over the years does 
> not mean that older entries in some database have suddenly developed 
> into property. All it means is that the community is very friendly for 
> not applying the new rules retroactively.
> 

The worst part of the filing was the fact that it asserted that by allowing the 
previous owner to retain ownership of the netblock, they were able to allocate 
addresses to customers and stay in business (as if they couldn't ask ARIN for 
more IP addresses).

The purpose of the transfer, if I read the filing correctly, was to give Kremen 
the right to force all routing of the block to stop to the various people using 
it to extort money out of them (based on the wording in the filing, that 
apparently is money Kremen lost). Many of the suballocated users of the netblock 
would probably have been innocent bystanders that are using a cheap ISP.

Of course, in reality, even with the transfer of the netblock, new allocations 
would have been requested and granted for networks requiring them. However, how 
many people would have been requested to pay or forced to immediately renumber? 
I've had to renumber a /18 when C&W decided to drop customers here. If they had 
forced them unroutable (claiming ownership) while I was trying to renumber, we 
wouldn't be questioning the status of IP addresses as property.


-Jack



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