[136564] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: And so it ends...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jay Ashworth)
Thu Feb 3 14:37:25 2011
Date: Thu, 3 Feb 2011 14:34:03 -0500 (EST)
From: Jay Ashworth <jra@baylink.com>
To: NANOG <nanog@nanog.org>
In-Reply-To: <9D4F0A12-2F7A-4352-92CF-3863E7028AFE@arin.net>
Errors-To: nanog-bounces+nanog.discuss=bloom-picayune.mit.edu@nanog.org
----- Original Message -----
> From: "John Curran" <jcurran@arin.net>
> Mr. Rubi -
>
> I'm sorry if my answer is not clear.
>
> If your question was: "What is the source of ARIN's legal authority to
> manage the ARIN WHOIS database?"
>
> then answer is that the database is managed as part of ARIN's mission,
> per policies established by the community.
>
> If you're trying to ask a different question, I'm more than happy to
> answer, but I'd ask that you be more explicit.
I strongly suspect that his question is actually "Does ARIN have any
enforceable legal authority to compel an entity to cease using a
specific block of address space, absent a contract?"
I suspect the actual answer will turn out to depend on whether courts
construe that as a property right or not. The situation is analogous
to that concerning telephone numbers, and that position has changed
over time, in that arena, as I understand it.
Cheers,
-- jra
