[Fwd: RE: Kremen VS Arin Antitrust Lawsuit - Anyone have feedback?]

Tue Sep 12 16:46:57 UTC 2006

IMHNLO ( In My Humble Non Legal Opinion)**

  IP Addresses were created by UC, BBN, AT&T for/under the US 
Government. They were managed and controlled by the Gov first with DARPA 
and then Commerce etc until the management was deeded to ARIN.  The 
original Internet was going to be destroyed by commercial interest 
according to the academics and it was to all of our relief. aka we now 
have jobs working with it.

When you request IP addresses for the RIRs you are "leasing" them from 
the RIR. The same as it you lease a house or car. If you stop paying the 
lease the Sheriff comes and takes the property back if you do not give 
it back. Names in DNS can be "owned" as far as we know. This means that 
the party in this lawsuit should have used DNS as I indicated in an 
earlier e-mail and not naked IP addresses directly.  This is basic 
contract law at least in Georgia that if the paperwork is written where 
you can assume the lease or you have to generate a new lease.

It is my understanding that ARIN favors the generation of  a new lease 
for space for good technical reasons. If my company gets bought or buys 
a company the chances that the combined address space aggregate well in 
v4 is very small. If there is space available with better aggregation 
that is the block that ARIN would like to give my company.

Since both parties signed the agreement with a non assumable lease 
provision, even a California court will have a hard time forcing new 
provisions or new interpretation to an existing signed lease contract.

In Georgia the contracts are written so that any change of company 
ownership, bankruptcy or legal action will terminate the contract and 
the items would have to be returned to the other party who leased them.

If this lease contract had/has so much economic value than the parties 
should have come to a deal before a final court order to protect that value.

John (ISDN) Lee

** In the State of Georgia to espouse a legal opinion is practicing law 
and unless you have the union papers they can prosecute you for 
practicing law without a license.

Foot Note:

Executives at EBS (ENRON Broadband Services), the company that I worked 
for at the time did not like the ARIN policies  and with the help of 
Enron corporate wanted to buy / take over ARIN and other RIRs so that 
they could generate a market for IP address blocks and extract greater 
value for them from the Internet community by setting up an IP trading 
desk.  My boss and I indicated that we did not think that this was a 
good idea and while management put a project team together of about 20 
lawyers to develop the concept they dropped it later because of more 
pressing legal issues.

The moral to this story is that if you do not like ARIN and want to get 
rid of it, which I do not want to do, what are you going to replace it 
with and how is that going to work or not work as the case may be.

Chris Jester wrote:

>  
>
>>>   Even if you assume that allocations made by ARIN are not property,
>>>      
>>>
>>it's
>>    
>>
>>>hard to argue that pre-ARIN allocations are not. They're not subject to
>>>revocation and their grant wasn't conditioned on compliance with
>>>      
>>>
>>policies.
>>
>>The reason that ARIN allocations are not property is
>>that pre-ARIN allocations were not property. ARIN is
>>merely continuing the former process with more structure
>>and public oversight. Are telephone numbers property?
>>
>>In any case, since the conditions of the pre-ARIN allocations
>>were all informal, unrecorded and largely verbal, nobody
>>can prove that there was any kind of irrevocable grant.
>>
>>--Michael Dillon
>>    
>>
>
>IP addresses appear to be property - - read http://news.findlaw.com/
>hdocs/docs/cyberlaw/kremencohen72503opn.pdf.  Given that domain names
>are property, IP addresses should be property, especially in
>California where are constitution states "All things of value are
>property"
>
>Also, what about ARINS hardcore attitude making it near impossible
>to aquire ip space, even when you justify it's use?  I have had
>nightmares myself as well as MANY of my collegues share similar experiences.
>I am having an issue right now with a UNIVERSITY in Mexico tryin to get
>ip's from the mexican counterpart.  Why is it that they involve lawyers,
>ask you all your customers names and etc... This is more information than
>I think they should be requiring. Any company that wishes to engage in
>business as an ISP or provider in some capacity should be granted the
>right to their own ip space. We cannot trust using ips swipped to us by
>upstreams and the like. Its just not safe to do that and you lose control.
>
>Actually, is there anyone else who shares these nightmares with me?
>I brought up the lawsuit with Kremen and ARIN to see if this is a common
>issue.  What are your views, and can someone share nightmare stories?
>
>Don't get me wrong, I think there has to be SOME due dilligence,
>however their methodology is a bit hitlerish.
>
>If you have had similar problems, contact me off list or on, if you wish.
>I'd love to talk to you. AIM is preferred.
>
>Chris Jester
>Suavemente, INC.
>SplitInfinity Networks
>619-227-8845
>
>AIM: NJesterIII
>ICQ: 64791506
>
>
>
>  
>
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