Re: 44/8

[Owen DeLong <owen () delong com>]

> On Jul 22, 2019, at 10:16 , William Herrin <bill () herrin us> wrote:
>
> On Mon, Jul 22, 2019 at 6:02 AM John Curran <jcurran () arin net <mailto:jcurran () arin net>> wrote:
> > On 21 Jul 2019, at 7:32 AM, William Herrin <bill () herrin us <mailto:bill () herrin us>> wrote:
> > > Having read their explanation, I think the folks involved had good 
> > > reasons and the best intentions but this stinks like fraud to me. Worse,
> > > it looks like ARIN was complicit in the fraud -- encouraging and then 
> > > supporting the folks involved as they established a fiefdom of their own
> > > rather than integrating with the organizations that existed.
> >
> > As you are aware, there are individuals and businesses who operate as
> > a “Doing Business As/DBA" or on behalf on an unincorporated organization
> > at the time of issuance; it is a more common occurrence than one might imagine,
> > and we have to deal with the early registrations appropriately based on the
> > particular circumstance.   ARIN promptly put processes in place so that such
> > registrations, having been made on behalf of a particular purpose or organization,
> > do not get misappropriated to become rights solely of the point of contact held for
> > personal gain – indeed, there are cases where organizations are created with
> > similar names for the purposes of hijacking number resources, but such cases
> > don’t generally involve principles who were involved in the administration of the
> > resources since issuance nor do they involve formalization of the registrant into
> > a public benefit not-for-profit organization.
>
> Respectfully John, this wasn't a DBA or an individual figuring the org name field on the old email template couldn't 
> be blank. A class-A was allocated to a _purpose_. You've not only allowed but encouraged that valuable resource to be 
> reassigned to an organization, this ARDC, and then treated the organization as a proxy for the purpose. No one asked 
> you to do that. Nothing in the publicly vetted policies demanded that you attach organizations to the purpose-based 
> allocations and certainly nothing demanded that you grant such organizations identical control over the resources as 
> the control possessed by folks who were the intended direct recipients of assignments.

This is a rare day, indeed, but I find myself largely agreeing with Bill here.

The only thing I dispute here is that I’m pretty sure that the principals of ARDC did request ARIN to make ARDC the 
controlling organization of the resource. The question here is whether or not it was appropriate or correct for ARIN to 
do so.

IMHO, it was not. IMHO, ARIN should have recognized that this particular block was issued for a purpose and not to an 
organization or individual. That contacts were volunteers from the community that agreed to take on a task. Even if the 
block ended up contactless, it should not have been open to claim and certainly not to 8.3 or 8.4 partial transfer to 
another organization away from that purpose.

Unfortunately, the incremental way in which this was done probably rendered ARIN staff into a situation similar to the 
proverbial (and apocryphal) frog in a pot of water. At each step, it probably seemed on the edge, but still 
appropriate. This was, of course exacerbated by the fact that the community didn’t really notice anything amiss until 
this last step, because the individuals in question were, by and large, trusted members of the community that appeared 
to be continuing to act in the community’s interest.

Honestly, I doubt most of the community was aware of (I certainly wasn’t) the incorporation of ARDC and the subsequent 
transfer of control of 44.0.0.0/8 to ARDC — The Enterprise vs. ARDC — The purpose. Had I been aware of that move at the 
time, I certainly would have scrutinized the governance process for ARDC and likely cried foul on that basis. That’s 
where I believe ARIN erred most grievously in this process and that’s where I believe these resources were hijacked to 
the detriment of the amateur radio community.

I have no doubt that the board of ARDC (most of whom i consider friends) believed they were doing the right thing at 
each and every step. Unfortunately, they fell victim to an insidious form of scope creep and lost track of the fact 
that this allocation was for a purpose and not for an organization, no matter how well intentioned said organization 
may be. These addresses should be considered non-transferrable and the transfer should be reversed.

Owen