Joe McGuckin typed:
2) Why does ARIN believe that it can ignore a court order?
Maybe because ARIN wasn't a party to the original proceedings
that generated that order?
Let's say you're eating lunch one day, minding your own business,
and a sheriff comes up with an official looking document and
says "You need to hand your car over to Fred..." because,
unknown to you, Fred and Barney just finished court proceedings
where the judge ruled that Barney had to give Fred "his" car,
even though that car was owned by you and just loaned to Barney.
Not a great analogy, because of the whole pink slip thing,
but you get the point.
-mark
Joe McGuckin typed:
>> 2) Why does ARIN believe that it can ignore a court order?
Maybe because ARIN wasn't a party to the original proceedings
that generated that order?
Let's say you're eating lunch one day, minding your own business,
and a sheriff comes up with an official looking document and
says "You need to hand your car over to Fred..." because,
unknown to you, Fred and Barney just finished court proceedings
where the judge ruled that Barney had to give Fred "his" car,
even though that car was owned by you and just loaned to Barney.
Not a great analogy, because of the whole pink slip thing,
but you get the point.
You comply with the court order to the extent that it will not do
irreversible damage to you, and you contest the order in court. To the
extent that the court order will do irreversible damage, you stall
compliance until you can get a court to suspend the order until you have
time to fully contest it. What you don't do is flat out refuse to comply
with the court order with the beneficiary of the court order and make them
go to court to enforce it.
If you assume that all Kremen's accusations are true (and correct the
obvious errors) his case seems very strong. ARIN should not have refused to
comply with a court order or insisted on conditioning its reply.
Even if you assume that allocations made by ARIN are not property, it's
hard to argue that pre-ARIN allocations are not. They're not subject to
revocation and their grant wasn't conditioned on compliance with policies.
DS
Mark,
A more ‘correct’ analogy would be as follows:
Let’s say you win a judgement against another party where the court essentially awards you all the assets of the
defendant. One of the assets is a paging company. So, you hike down to the FCC and want the radio licenses for the business
re-registered in your name, you present a valid court order to show that the court has awarded you title to the assets. In fact,
you present a court order specifically ordering the FCC to re-register the licensed spectrum to you.
How can the FCC refuse? Any court with proper jurisdiction certainly has the ability to assess damages and specify remedies for those
damages. A station license or spectrum - even though is not actual ownership, but a lease or license - is an asset and routinely are sold
for millions, even billions of dollars.
More to the point, how can ARIN refuse such an order?
Joe McGuckin
ViaNet Communications
joe@via.net
650-207-0372 cell
650-213-1302 office
650-969-2124 fax
Actually that is pretty good analogy.
Unfortunately in this case, the block appears to be one of legacy /16s
that ARIN did not assign but IANA or Internic probably did. We're
actually lucky they decided to not sue IANA or NSI because then the
whole thing would have been ever messier and judge even more confused.
IANAL, but I doubt it this will quickly end with summary judgment
though (you need similar cases for judge to compare and see decisions there, otherwise detailed investigation of case will be required).
Don't worry about costs though, I think ARIN has enough extra and
do have a lawyer, so I hope they spend it what is necessary to
get good results which can also be cited in the future.
More to the point, how can ARIN refuse such an order?
I would guess ARIN's point is "It's not yours to give" and that the
original court overstepped their bounds and clearly misunderstood the
whole notion of IP address "ownership."
Also, I think your example is almost as flawed as mine, and the
bidding for spectrum establishes a marketplace for it, while there is
no such thing for IP space.
I think a closer example is an operation that has phone numbers,
or perhaps more specifically, a 555 number. 555 numbers are supposed
to be for "information services" and are assigned based on some guidelines.
Suppose I win a suit against some bozo who runs just such a service
and has a 555 number and I get awarded his assets. So, I sell the
"information services company" but keep the 555 number for myself
(because it would be cool).
Should I be allowed to keep the 555 number, or should I have to establish
that my use will fit under the current guidelines, just like everyone else?
-mark
P.S. I get NANOG in digest form, so I may not be completely
up-to-date on this discussion.
* davids@webmaster.com (David Schwartz) [Fri 08 Sep 2006, 21:20 CEST]:
Even if you assume that allocations made by ARIN are not property, it's hard to argue that pre-ARIN allocations are not. They're not subject to revocation and their grant wasn't conditioned on compliance with policies.
Some people here are on crack. Comparing IP addresses to mining rights? They're just numbers, not actual physical property. Do you also propose to take allocations away again when they're not announced on the Internet?
Address space policy has always been the result of a community consensus. Just because that consensus has shifted over the years does not mean that older entries in some database have suddenly developed into property. All it means is that the community is very friendly for not applying the new rules retroactively.
-- Niels.
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Amazing how many people fail to trim quoted material,
but at least they aren't top-posting.
Sounds a lot like tragedy of the commons. To wit, the benefits
of having the IP space is given to the "owner", whereas the
resources are finite, and the cost of a new allocation is
borne by all (roughly proportional to the number of routers
that need large routing tables).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons
This is always a formula for disaster, but I'm surprised it
has taken this long to metastasize into anything obvious.
If search engine page rank was indifferent to number of netblocks,
I don't think it would be an issue. And then maybe people would
go back to making sites that people want to link to, instead of
trying to game the engines for personal profit.
Note the similarity to phone numbers, and how the telcos are being
dragged kicking and screaming towards portable numbers by the FCC
(I think).
BTW: When I started using this Innernet thingy, you could buy /24's
and they were portable, IIRC.
- --
The whole point of the Internet is that different kinds of computers
can interoperate. Every time you see a web site that only supports
certain browsers or operating systems, they clearly don't get it.
...
Even if you assume that allocations made by ARIN are not property, it's
hard to argue that pre-ARIN allocations are not. They're not subject to
revocation and their grant wasn't conditioned on compliance with policies.
...
I don't understand how you can assert this. Use of IP addresses follows
the current policies, whatever they are. They have no grandfathered
rights.
Oops, here I am sounding like I know something about lawyering. 
I
think we all need to either wait for the results, or if so moved, send
in amicus curiae briefs. Not a lot else we can do, since few if any of
us are lawyers, except pray that the judge is enlightened.
Niels Bakker wrote:
Address space policy has always been the result of a community consensus. Just because that consensus has shifted over the years does not mean that older entries in some database have suddenly developed into property. All it means is that the community is very friendly for not applying the new rules retroactively.
The worst part of the filing was the fact that it asserted that by allowing the previous owner to retain ownership of the netblock, they were able to allocate addresses to customers and stay in business (as if they couldn't ask ARIN for more IP addresses).
The purpose of the transfer, if I read the filing correctly, was to give Kremen the right to force all routing of the block to stop to the various people using it to extort money out of them (based on the wording in the filing, that apparently is money Kremen lost). Many of the suballocated users of the netblock would probably have been innocent bystanders that are using a cheap ISP.
Of course, in reality, even with the transfer of the netblock, new allocations would have been requested and granted for networks requiring them. However, how many people would have been requested to pay or forced to immediately renumber? I've had to renumber a /18 when C&W decided to drop customers here. If they had forced them unroutable (claiming ownership) while I was trying to renumber, we wouldn't be questioning the status of IP addresses as property.
-Jack
Even if you assume that allocations made by ARIN are not property,
it's
hard to argue that pre-ARIN allocations are not. They're not subject to
revocation and their grant wasn't conditioned on compliance with
policies.
The reason that ARIN allocations are not property is
that pre-ARIN allocations were not property. ARIN is
merely continuing the former process with more structure
and public oversight. Are telephone numbers property?
In any case, since the conditions of the pre-ARIN allocations
were all informal, unrecorded and largely verbal, nobody
can prove that there was any kind of irrevocable grant.
--Michael Dillon