[Community-Discuss] Supreme Court Order in Relation to Cloud Innovation v AFRINIC

[Ibeanusi Elvis]

The list of the unjust, questionable, unreasonable actions and the abusive
misuse of power of the AFRINIC goes on and on. An outline of the reasons
justifying their actions which tends to put lots of end users at risk and
in severe danger. If the internet community should let this slide, a
repetition is plausible hence, we depend answers from the AFRINIC.

Regards,
Elvis

On Wed, Jul 14, 2021 at 20:19 Mike Silber <silber.mike at gmail.com> wrote:


>

>

> On 14 Jul 2021, at 13:10, Wijdane Goubi <goubi.wijdane at gmail.com> wrote:

>

> I completely endorse this.

>

> Recently, AFRINIC has been operating in a suspicious manner, leading us to

> wonder what is driving these acts. Furthermore, AFRINIC appears to be

> unconcerned about the potential ramifications of such decisions for

> millions of users, which is highly troubling. Who will address this issue

> if we as a community do not address it and speak out loudly about it?

>

> Furthermore, we have not been given any information about the meeting or

> the decision-making process, which is our absolute and complete

> entitlement. It's a membership termination issue for a company with a large

> number of employees who will lose their jobs instantly, as well as millions

> of end users who will lose access to the internet as a result of this

> "decision".

>

> I highly urge AFRINIC to respond to all of these concerns in a timely

> manner because they are genuine and affect not only the community but also

> the end users.

>

> Regards,

> Wijdane

>

> Le mer. 14 juil. 2021 à 03:43, tech <tech at cloudinnovation.org> a écrit :

>

>> This letter is a follow-up to the unfortunate incident arising from the

>> actions taken by AFRINIC (African Network Information Centre), including

>> terminating our (Cloud Innovation Ltd) membership and reclaiming our number

>> resources which we consider to have been totally unnecessary, unreasonable,

>> and unjust. The action has not caused only serious damage to Cloud

>> Innovation and hundreds of its clients' businesses, but also to hundreds of

>> millions of end-users who were potentially endangered at the same time.

>>

>> We are pleased to announce that  urgent interim relief has been granted

>> to Cloud Innovation by the Honourable Judge in Chambers of  the Supreme

>> Court of Mauritius( herewith attached) to prevent AFRINIC from reclaiming

>> our number resources in such illegal manner.  As a result of which,  Cloud

>> Innovation will now be in a position to resume business as normal until the

>> issues are resolved before the competent courts..

>>

>> For the sake of clarity and transparency, we would share with you as set

>> out below the background which led to the current state of affairs:

>>

>> -    AFRINIC  issued a letter to Cloud Innovation on June 23, 2020,

>> accusing Cloud Innovation of policy violations. AFRINIC threatened to take

>> actions and demanded an immediate response within 14 days. Despite the

>> short notice, Cloud Innovation investigated AFRINIC's accusations

>> carefully. Cloud Innovation did not find any policy violations of its own

>> but only AFRINIC's own misinterpretation of its policy document and errors

>> in understanding the nature of BGP. Cloud Innovation duly issued a response

>> on 13 July 2020, within the deadline set by AFRINIC to explain the

>> misunderstanding of AFRINIC’s own documents and erroneous assertions

>> regarding routing.

>>

>> -     After eight months, AFRINIC issued a letter on 10 March 2021 (

>> being the first day Mauritius went into a second national lockdown due to

>> COVID-19)  to Cloud Innovation, raising similar alleged breaches as

>> those alleged in June 2020 but with  the following warning note::

>>

>> *To address the aforementioned issues, Cloud Innovation Ltd is hereby

>> most formally required to promptly and accurately submit its “change

>> request” in compliance with Clauses 4(a) and 2(d) of the RSA, as well as

>> ensure full compliance with AFRINIC. The “change request” must*

>> *include:*

>> *I. Detailed utilisation information for all the aforementioned IPv4

>> prefixes including the services for which the resources are being used and

>> country of service origin.*

>> *II. Planned utilisation of your remaining IPv4 space for the next 8

>> months*

>> *III.Your “change request”, if any, should reach AFRINIC by 12-04-2021,

>> by the close of business.*

>> *AFRINIC shall consider the merits of your request, if any, and will in

>> its sole discretion determine whether to terminate the RSA as well as to

>> proceed with the reclaiming of the IPv4 Number Resources allocated to Cloud

>> Innovation Ltd. You are further informed that AFRINIC shall not be held

>> liable for any loss or damage of whatever nature arising out of the present

>> notice or any action that AFRINIC may take in accordance thereof. Your

>> “change request”, if any, should reach AFRINIC by 12-04-2021, by the close

>> of business.AFRINIC shall consider the merits of your request, if any, and

>> will in its sole discretion determine whether to terminate the RSA as well

>> as to proceed with the reclaiming of the IPv4 Number Resources allocated to

>> Cloud Innovation Ltd. You are further informed that AFRINIC shall not be

>> held liable for any loss or damage of whatever nature arising out of the

>> present notice or any action that AFRINIC may take in accordance *

>> thereof.

>>

>>          The false accusations made by AFRINIC and our response/views are

>> attached in a separate document (named:Chronology) for the benefit of all

>> the community..

>>

>> -       As the 3rd largest member of AFRINIC, Cloud Innovation serves

>> hundreds of millions of end-users through hundreds of telecoms and ISPs

>> around the world. The services, such as hosting websites, counts        for

>> over 1.5 million websites hosted by Cloud Innovation's IP alone. Thus,

>> there is no way, especially with the size of Cloud Innovation, to fully and

>> wholly satisfy AFRINIC's request within the timeframe it provided. With the

>> real threat of membership termination and hundreds of millions of users'

>> connectivity on the line, Cloud Innovation was left with no option but to

>> seek the mercy of the court in Mauritius during a period of lockdown with

>> limited resources. An interim order of injunction was therefore issued by

>> the Mauritius court on April 7,2021 to protect the interests of end-users

>> and to forbid AFRINIC from acting irrationally.

>>

>>

>>

>> -       By virtue of a judgment issued on the evening of  7 July 2021,

>> the said injunction was lifted on the basis of a mere legal technicality

>> basis, which was partially caused by the inability to provide a power of

>> attorney to our lawyers in Mauritius during the total lockdown of

>> Mauritius, a direct result of AFRINIC releasing such a letter to us on the

>>   first day  of the Mauritius lockdown.

>>

>>

>> -       In order to protect our interests and the hundreds of millions

>> of users of number resources registered to us, we took immediate action by

>> filing an appeal against the judgment on the very next day..

>>

>>

>> -       In order to safeguard its interests, Cloud Innovation had to

>> again seek urgent relief before the Supreme Court of Mauritius.   By

>> virtue of an interim order of injunction issued on 13 July 2021, AFRINIC

>> has been restrained and prohibited from terminating our membership and

>> reclaiming our number resources.   The said proceedings are now pending

>> before the Supreme Court of Mauritius.

>>

>>

>> -       We welcome the urgent intervention of the Supreme Court of

>> Mauritius for interim relief in order to protect our rights as a member. .

>> We would like to inform those concerned that the operations of our number

>> resources will revert to normal at the earliest as AFRINIC is under an

>> obligation to comply with the Judge’s Order as attached.

>>

>>

>> -       We wish to emphasise that as an AFRINIC member in good standing,

>> we consistently abide by their policy and strive to contribute to the

>> community to the best of our ability. We have never intended to take any

>> action against AFRINIC but are obligated to take the appropriate measures

>> to protect ourselves, the hundreds of our customers, and hundreds of

>> millions of end-users.

>>

>>

>> -       We reserve full and absolute legal rights and remedies in

>> respect to AFRINIC's actions against us.

>>

>> We would also like to clarify that as the NRO has stated in their letter,

>> "All RIRs, on occasion, face allegations of errors in implementation of

>> policy or agreements, and such disputes, being routine in nature are best

>> handled by the individual RIR and/or its community ", such routine

>> disagreement (mostly in all the other RIRs, or AFRINIC before this

>> management) is sorted by merely communicating between the tech team and the

>> registration services department of the respective RIR. It has never come

>> to such drastic actions before, like the RIR threatening and endangering

>> the very stability of the Internet.

>>

>> We trust the above has shed some light on the matter for all those

>> concerned. We are grateful for the continued belief and support we have

>> received from all of you.

>>

>>

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>>

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