Re: 2749 routes AT RISK - Re: TIMELY/IMPORTANT - Approximately 40 hours until potentially significant routing changes (re: Retirement of ARIN Non-Authenticated IRR scheduled for 4 April 2022)

[John Curran <jcurran () arin net>]

On 4 Apr 2022, at 8:16 PM, John Gilmore <gnu () toad com<mailto:gnu () toad com>> wrote:

Let's not undermine one of the few remaining widely distributed (with no
center) technical achievements behind the Internet -- the decentralized
routing system.

I'm on the board of a large legacy allocation that is deliberately NOT
an ARIN (or other RIR) member.  And I have a small address block of my
own, ditto.

ARIN doesn't provide authenticated RPKI entries for just anybody.  You
have to pay them for that service.  And in order to pay them, you have
to sign their contract.  And if you sign that contract, ARIN can take
away your legacy allocation -- anytime they decide it would be in their
best interest.  Whereas, if you don't sign, the courts have held that
you have a *property right* in your IP addresses and they *belong* to
you.  As a result, most legacy address holders (a large fraction of the
Internet addresses) have declined to sign such contracts, pay such
bills, and thus can't be in the ARIN authenticated routing registry.

Hello John -

Your legal summary is patently incorrect; I’d be happy to discuss it anytime with you – in public or private as you 
prefer – but the short version is that courts have indeed held that a party can have an interest (such as bankruptcy 
estate or probate estate interest) in specific rights to Internet number blocks in the ARIN registry, but that doesn’t 
equate to rights to free-held property (i.e. property that one can dispose of independently of interests of other 
parties in the same address block entries, such as ARIN’s right to enforce the community-policies for transfers, 
specify the format and content of registry entries, etc.)

The most often cited case in this regard is probably Nortel/Microsoft sale which did not proceed until the agreement 
was conditioned as ARIN required – reference [In re Nortel Networks, Inc., No. 09-10138, KG 2011 WL 110098, Docket # 
5315, at 4 (Bankr. D. Del. 2011) (assignee’s interest limited to exclusive right to use)]

To date ARIN hasn’t never been instructed to update our registry contrary to our community-developed policies, and in 
fact, courts have repeated enforced conditions on transfer in bankruptcy, probate, and other contexts that the parties 
involved must comply with ARIN’s policies.   Feel free to reach out to any of the many IP address brokers out there 
<https://www.arin.net/resources/registry/transfers/stls/registered_facilitators/> and ask if you have any doubt on 
this...

For years, ARIN has been deliberately limiting access to the RPKI
registry as a lever to force people to sign one-sided contracts
beneficial to ARIN.  (They do the same lever thing when you sell an
address block -- at ARIN, it loses its legacy status, requiring the
recipient to pay annual rent to ARIN, and risk losing their block if
political winds shift.)

Let me make it a little simpler - ARIN’s RPKI services have been developed at the behest of its member community and 
are available to that same community who bear its costs.

You may not like such decisions, but you certainly have the ability to get involved to change things, or even run for 
the member-elected ARIN Board of Trustees if you so choose.  We recently even changed the membership structure recently 
so that any member with IPv4 or IPv6 resources (not just “ISPs”) can be a General Member and vote in the elections.   
In the end, we are not-for-profit membership organization and will be accountable to members (and the community) that 
get involved in the organization.

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers