[Community-Discuss] Share About Cloud Innovation Ltd and their business

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <E3804B47-D693-4A4C-BAE3-C848DC49CBD1 at consulintel.es>, 
JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <jordi.palet at consulintel.es> wrote:


>Ronald is very right.


Jordi, you say that almost as if there could ever have been any doubt!

:-)


Anyway, there has been a lot of heat and backbiting and diversions and
(in my opinion) uncalled for veiled innuendo in and on the mailing lists
of late, but for me, the central issues that both members and outside
observers, such as myself, should be concerned about are just these
(in no particular order):

     (*) Did Cloud Innovation behave properly, lawfully, and in accordance
     with their RSA contract and AFRINIC policy back when the company first
     received its IPv4 allocations?

     (*) Since then, has Cloud Innovation behaved properly, lawfully, and
     in accordance with their RSA contract and AFRINIC policy?

     (*) When AFRINIC first granted Cloud Innovation its IPv4 allocations,
     did it (AFRINIC) behave properly, lawfully, and in accordance with all
     applicable AFRINIC policies and procedures at that time?

     (*) When AFRINIC recently made the decision to (attempt to) reclaim
     those IPv4 address blocks that AFRINIC had previously granted to Cloud
     Innovation, did it behave properly, lawfully, and in accordance with
     its own policies and Bylaws, AND in accordance with the terms of Cloud
     Innovation's previously executed RSA contract (which also bound AFRINIC
     to certain Terms & Conditions)?

     (*) Did the Mauritian judicial system behave properly, lawfully, and
     in accordance with Mauritian law when it granted an (ex parte?) request
     for an order freezing AFRINIC's bank accounts?

Having set forth these key questions, I would urge restraint on all those who
would now attempt to provide us with their views on these questions ESPECIALLY
if their responses would provide no new hard information and no viewpoints
that have not already been flogged to death on this mailing list.  There
is neither any need for nor any purpose to be served by Owen writing another
10,000 lines explaining his viewpoint.  I think we all have already taken
note of that, in spades.  Equally, there is neither any need for, nor any
point in Leo posting any more vague innuendos about "money".  (Having made
this suggestion, I will break with my own recommendation and give my view,
briefly, on just the final bullet point above, but in a separate message
to follow this one.)

In short, we have no shortage of opinions here.  What we do have is a relative
dearth of hard facts and evidence, and 99% of all the posts here over the past
week or so have failed to do a single thing to improve that situation.

As I have said previously, the Mauritian courts will, I hope, in due course
be the ultimate arbiters of the several open questions listed above, leaving
the opinions posted here as merely the proverbial "sound and fury, signifying
nothing."  Until then, and given that neither party has shown us all of their
cards, most of us here are and will remain just passive observers to a high
stakes poker game whose outcome is as yet quite uncertain.

I'm sure that both sides of this epic struggle are hoping that their respective
astroturfing efforts, here on this list, will in some way affect the final
outcome.  My hope is that it shall not be so.  The facts should determine the
outcome, not the PR campaigns or either side or either faction.

One final comment on Jordi's post...


>We need to be crystal clear and transparent: If we want that the documented

>purposes for any member can change without a re-check, then it is open to

>all kind of cheating...


Jordi's point is valid, but doesn't go nearly far enough in the way of
diagnosing the actual problem.

The entire global system by which the five RIRs decide who will and who
will not be granted (now valuable) number resources is, and has been from
the beginning, and BY DESIGN a process cloaked in utter secrecy, with
zero outside accountability.  The entire system is an open invitation
to cheating and self-dealing, no less so than the equally international
and unaccountable organization known as FIFA.  (And I hope that you all
know by now how well THAT worked out.)

To paraphrase from the classic Tennessee Williams play "A Streetcar Named
Desire", all of us have been, are, and remain "Reliant on the honesty of
strangers."

This is the actual and central lesson of "The Great AFRINIC Heist" that
no one but me seems to have fully appreciated, i.e. that under a cloak of
utter secrecy and in the absence of any independent oversight, anything
is possible... not just corruption, but corruption on a grand scale, and
corruption that can even go on for years on end without anyone being any
the wiser.

Back in the salad days, when IP addresses were worth nothing, the global
system of RIRs worked well enough.  But we haven't been living in that
carefree, idyllic and innocent age for at least twelve or thirteen years
now, ever since Microsoft bough a massive chunk of legacy IPv4 space from
the bankruptcy estate of Nortel.  That anyone might still believe, here
in the year 2021, that the old system is still appropriate to the modern
challenges is frankly unfathomable to me.  If anything should have persuaded
everyone that the old system, based as it is on secrecy and NDAs and zero
independent review, is hopelessly broken, then "The Great AFRINIC Heist"
should have been that something.  That heist should have been the 800
pound canary in the coal mine.  But apparently it is going to take an even
bigger crisis of faith for people to finally see the writing on the wall.

There's no way to know just yet, but we may currently be witnessing the
beginning of exactly such a bigger crisis.


Regards,
rfg