An update on the AfriNIC situation

Constantine A. Murenin mureninc at gmail.com
Sun Aug 29 18:42:13 UTC 2021


This whole discussion reminds me of the situation the security and
vulnerability researchers often face from the corporate overlords.

Why is noone talking about the real issue?

Namely, how could a RIR be so easily shutdown by the courts with the
jurisdiction?

Why is this mailing list used to solicit donations for presumably the
bigger party, which has evidently lost their day in court so far?
How's that within NANOG AUP?

Why are we blaming the party who has identified the faults of the
system, and used these faults to some perceived advantage?  Everyone
knows that everyone else has been engaged in IP address arbitrage for
a while anyways, how's this instance all that different?  Just because
it involves AfriNIC presumably many have ignored until now?  Just
because the smaller party has hired a good lawyer and has had a
successful day in court so far?

Why is this mailing list used to advocate interruption and termination
of service by the cloud providers for unsuspecting third-parties?

How convenient that we have courts on our side "usually", yet in this
case they aren't, but that's okay, because the Mauritian courts must
not be the good ones!  Let's just revert to the vigilante system and
prevent third-parties not to the dispute from receiving the service
just because a "bad guy" happens to be an intermediary facilitator!

Don't blame the player, blame the game.  I read all these messages in
this thread, plus John Curran's 2021-08-27 statement at teamarin.net,
and I'm not convinced that the whole crowd going against a single
player, who has law on their side so far, is a fair game here.  Even
more ironic is that John alleges CI couldn't justify an ARIN
allocation because "business activities outside of the ARIN service
region", only to go on and complain in the very next paragraph about
the announcement of the AfriNIC address space from within the United
States (i.e., actual proof of use within ARIN service region).

It would seem reasonable to leave the whole issue up to the courts,
instead of engaging in contempt of foreign courts, and to stop the
vigilante justice against any of the parties, especially the end users
who are not even a party to this whole dispute.

C.


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