Re: AFRINIC placed in receivership

["Delong.com via NANOG" <nanog () nanog org>]

> On Sep 15, 2023, at 15:05, Eric Kuhnke <eric.kuhnke () gmail com> wrote:
>
> A much better explanation of the situation can be found at:
>
> https://www.theregister.com/2023/07/03/nrs_afrinic_review/
>
> I also recommend that everyone who is not yet familiar with the issue google Lu Heng and Cloud Innovations, the Hong 
> Kong based corporate entity in question which caused this.

Fair suggestion, but I wouldn’t say it’s fair to say Lu Heng or CI caused this. I’d say that AFRINIC’s
leadership at the time had an at least equal role in creating the problems and in failing to address
Them in a timely manner.

CI didn’t sue AFRINIC for nothing. AFRINIC, in violation of the actual text of their bylaws attempted
to revoke CI space and created major disruptions to a number of networks in the process. Had CI
not received the injunctions they got from the courts, likely the disruption would have been much
worse and caused some pretty wide-spread outages. 

> https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=lu+heng+cloud+innovation
>
> The short version of this is that a HK based corporate entity claims it is the legitimate "owner" of 7 million 
> AFRINIC IPs.

AFRINIC legitimately issued those (closer to 6M) IP addresses to Cloud Innovation based on justifications submitted. 
AFRINIC then attempted, using claims that usage out of region is not permitted by the bylaws
(It is not prohibited by the bylaws, feel free to read them yourself), to reclaim those addresses.

AFRINIC whois and the courts have confirmed that Cloud Innovation is the rightful registrant of those
addresses at the time and as of now. Until a court rules otherwise (which is very unlikely at this point),
they don’t “own” the addresses, but they do “own” the rights to those registrations in the AFRINIC
database.

(Nobody “owns” any integers… Everyone remains equally free to use the number 5 as much as they want.)

Owen



> On Thu, Sep 14, 2023 at 6:09 AM Bryan Fields <Bryan () bryanfields net <mailto:Bryan () bryanfields net>> wrote:
> > On 9/13/23 9:27 PM, Bryan Fields wrote:
> > > I think this qualifies as potentially operational.
> > >
> > > Afrinic placed in receivership, board elections to be held in six months:
> > > https://archive.ph/jOFE4
> >
> > Looks like archive.ph <http://archive.ph/> is having problems.  This is the original article.
> >
> > > https://www.capacitymedia.com/article/2c6pnx4ymt7sd5c493wg0/news/exclusive-afrinic-placed-in-receivership-board-elections-to-be-held-in-six-months
> > -- 
> > Bryan Fields
> >
> > 727-409-1194 - Voice
> > http://bryanfields.net <http://bryanfields.net/>