Way off topic here...and into the legal arena: As to the monopoly classification, do you think, at least with ARIN (since it is a US/Virginia corporation) that Sherman Act ยง2 (i.e. antitrust) principles could be applied to require that it relinquish some of the control over said IP space/database and act in a more competitive manner? What about the other RIRs worldwide? I'm not an antitrust lawyer, but there may be an issue there.
There was a paper a while back from a UMiami (Michael Froomkin) professor talking about ICANN and Antitrust. http://arxiv.org/pdf/cs/0109075 - This is a legal paper, not an engineering paper. I wonder if those same principles could be applied here. On Feb 3, 2011, at 3:42 PM, David Conrad wrote: > On Feb 3, 2011, at 8:59 AM, Owen DeLong wrote: >> That remains to be seen. If they give up their space, it is unclear that >> they have any right to transfer it to another >> organization rather than return it to the successor registry. There is no >> precedent established showing that >> this is allowed. > > Right. Like Compaq returned 16/8 when they acquired Digital (and HP returned > 16/8 when they acquired Compaq). > >> That remains to be seen. IANA has declared them the successor registries > > No. First, "IANA" does not exist. The term "IANA" now refers to a series of > functions currently performed under contract from the US Dept. of Commerce, > NTIA by ICANN. As such it can't declare anything. > > Second, neither ICANN nor the USG has (to my knowledge) declared the RIRs to > be "successor registries" (whatever they are). The IPv4 registry continues > to exist and will undoubtedly be maintained as it always has been. The only > real difference is that there aren't any more IPv4 /8s tagged with > "UNALLOCATED". > >> The other thing to consider is that the RIR doesn't really need to "reclaim" >> the block, per se. They can simply stop providing uniqueness to the >> organizations that don't have a contract with them and issue those numbers >> to some other organization that has a contract. The other organization would >> know that their uniqueness is limited to those cooperating in the registry >> system. >> >> Does an organization that has no contract with an RIR have a right to expect >> that RIR to continue to provide them a unique registration? > > The RIRs are self-defined geographical monopolies that provide a set of > public infrastructure services to the Internet community at large. It's an > interesting question whether that service is limited to only those folks who > pay -- my guess if the RIRs took this stance, they'd be looking down the > barrel of numerous governmental anti-monopoly/anti-cartel agencies. > > However, pragmatically speaking, the folks who matter in any of this are the > ISPs. The RIRs exist primarily as a means by which ISPs can avoid doing a > myriad set of bilateral agreements as to who "owns" what address space to > ensure uniqueness. If the RIRs reduce their value by no longer providing > that service in an effective way (e.g., by doing what you suggest), I suspect > the ISPs would find other entities to provide global uniqueness services. > > Regards, > -drc > Ernesto M. Rubi Sr. Network Engineer AMPATH/CIARA Florida International Univ, Miami Reply-to: erne...@cs.fiu.edu Cell: 786-282-6783
