[External] Re: Normal ARIN registration service fees for LRSA entrants after 31 Dec 2023 (was: Fwd: [arin-announce] Availability of the Legacy Fee Cap for New LRSA Entrants Ending as of 31 December 2023)

Mon Sep 19 16:16:26 UTC 2022

This is where things keep getting held up on the legal side. At least in my experience. It would be great if something could be expanded upon in the RSA to clarify some rights.

Has ARIN ever worked with the IANA, NSF, OSTP, DOJ, etc to clarify things? I recall this letter https://www.arin.net/vault/resources/legacy/ARIN-Rudolph-NSF-18OCT2012.pdf where an argument is made. But so far there has been no statement by OSTP or DoC/NTIA that would help legacy holders navigate this. Just ARIN's opinion (above).

Again fees are not an issue, but the vague language stating any policy may change at any time is a big show stopper.

" The RSA contract ARIN offers registrants boils down to this: so long as you pay us, you can use IP addresses the way we say you can. The way we say you can is subject to change at any time according to the change process which we can replace at any time at the pleasure of our board of trustees who are chosen through a process that they can change at any time. There's not even anything in the contract that ARIN's application of policy can be restricted to the policies in effect at the time the issuance of the number resources or that those policies won't change in a manner which results in the revocation of those resources when used as represented to ARIN that they would be.
ARIN's NRPM contract is devoid of any -meaningful- protections for the registrant; all rights are reserved to ARIN.

I hope you understand why I would choose ambiguous rights over no rights at all."

That said I do plan to have my org apply for membership since we do have IPv6 resources under RSA. I'm just not sure one more voice asking for clarity is going to have any real impact.

Tom Krenn
Network Architect
Enterprise Architecture - Information Technology

-----Original Message-----
From: NANOG <nanog-bounces+tom.krenn=hennepin.us at nanog.org> On Behalf Of William Herrin
Sent: Monday, September 19, 2022 10:53 AM
To: Tom Beecher <beecher at beecher.cc>
Cc: John Curran <jcurran at arin.net>; North American Network Operators' Group <nanog at nanog.org>
Subject: [External] Re: Normal ARIN registration service fees for LRSA entrants after 31 Dec 2023 (was: Fwd: [arin-announce] Availability of the Legacy Fee Cap for New LRSA Entrants Ending as of 31 December 2023)

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On Mon, Sep 19, 2022 at 7:16 AM Tom Beecher <beecher at beecher.cc> wrote:
> Allocations made before the RIR systems were created have no contracts
> or covenants attached. Allocations made from the RIRs do.
>
> The 'rights' claimed by legacy holders are therefore unenumerated ;
> their argument is essentially 'nothing says I don't have these rights,
> so I say I do'.

Not because I "say" I do but because legal precedent has said that folks in roughly comparable situations in the past did. Nothing exactly the same or there wouldn't be any ambiguity but similar enough for me to think I have rights.

> This leads to the current situation, where the legacy holders don't
> really want any case law or contractual agreements to enumerate what
> rights they may (or may not) have, because if that happens, they would
> be prevented from asserting some new right in the future. We all I
> think acknowledge that technology often races out in front of the law,
> this situation is no different.

I'd be happy to have case law or a contract that clarifies the situation, wherever that might end up. I won't force the matter unless ARIN puts me in a position where it's either go to court or knuckle under. Despite the war of words, ARIN has shown no signs of doing so.
As for a contract, if ARIN offered an acceptable contract or was willing to negotiate toward an acceptable contract, I would as happily clarify my rights that way. To my perspective (and I've said this many times in the past) it is ARIN who would prefer not to have the matter clarified as it would certainly be clarified that ARIN has less power over the legacy registrations than their RSA contract requests and elements of that clarification could spill over into the contracted resources.

The RSA contract ARIN offers registrants boils down to this: so long as you pay us, you can use IP addresses the way we say you can. The way we say you can is subject to change at any time according to the change process which we can replace at any time at the pleasure of our board of trustees who are chosen through a process that they can change at any time. There's not even anything in the contract that ARIN's application of policy can be restricted to the policies in effect at the time the issuance of the number resources or that those policies won't change in a manner which results in the revocation of those resources when used as represented to ARIN that they would be.
ARIN's NRPM contract is devoid of any -meaningful- protections for the registrant; all rights are reserved to ARIN.

I hope you understand why I would choose ambiguous rights over no rights at all.

Regards,
Bill Herrin

--
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