Hi Denis, On Wed, Oct 21, 2020 at 02:32:02PM +0000, ripedenis@yahoo.co.uk wrote:
I think you are wrong on both your points. Firstly you are making the classic confusion between RIPE NCC and RIPE. Policies are made by the RIPE community based on consensual agreement. Once agreed it is expected all affected parties will accept and follow a policy. Presumably the contract members have with the RIPE NCC requires them to follow future RIPE policies. But legacy resource holders are still part of the RIPE community and probably take part in the discussions on policies. As part of an industry based on cooperation and consensual driven policy they do have an obligation to follow all policies agreed, even if it is not legally enforceable.
How many divisions does the RIPE community have? This question was, anecdotally and rhetorically, asked by Stalin wrt the Pope. This is not a bad analogy as the Vatican can make all sorts of rules but can only "enforce" them vs members of the roman catholic church (and with less than absolute success at that) "Politics is the art of the possible, the attainable." --Otto v. Bismarck
"If legislators want to make law, they'll make law, regardless of what RIPE does." This is not true. The years of discussions between the RIRs and governments and LEAs on internet governance have shown that as long as the industry acts responsibly and manages the internet in a way that governments and LEAs can accept then things can continue as they are now. It is a balance and balances have tipping points.
Fistly, let me address a point which I missed in my previous: WHICH legislator? EUPARL? UKPARL? Putin? Erdogan? The King of Saudi Arabia? All within the RIPE service region. Secondly, I stand over my point. Legislators will legislate if they see an advantage in doing so and if they listen to anyone it will not be the RIPE community. I may yet happen that a nation state will think it advantageous to lay claim to the ownership of certain integers and there will be nothing the RIPE community or the NCC can do about this, so why worry about this now?
I think David Farmer made a good point: "The concept that the legacy status applies independently to resources or IP addresses, separate from their assignment to a resource holder, seems incorrect. The legacy status applies to the assignment of resources to a resource holder before the creation of the RIRs, but not to the resources or the IP addresses themselves. " I agree with this statement. The legacy status should only apply to 'contractual ownership' or 'administrative management' of resources, not to consensual policy driven operational use of address space. Even if the contracts under which they received their legacy address space suggested they could assign the same rights to a buyer of the address space, the environment under which address space is used is governed by policies now. ALL address space used in this environment should be subject to the policies governing this environment, regardless of administrative status.
I would want to hear the opinion of an actual lawyer about this, so far it sounds like mere wishful thinking. rgds, Sascha Luck