[Community-Discuss] Demanding Clarification and/or apology from PTA

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

In message <CANOqSOQQVywAnMgHn=Q8cnwVpwHRo8OXZCj0+fEdGbneLasHMg at mail.gmail.com>
Amin Dayekh <admin at megamore.ng> wrote:

>AfriNic acted according to the Bylaw and court, allow me here to refresh
>your memory, if the ipv4 is not restricted to ise in Africa then why the
>proposals for inter RIR transfer and Other proposals from the Meeting which
>are available online?

With respect to the various IP blocks that were reclaimed by AFRINIC due
to the now evident fact that they were outright stolen, geography is
rather entirely irrelevant to those blocks, I think.

With respect to the various IP blocks that AFRINIC has attempted to reclaim
from Cloud Innovation, I confess that I personally am still very much in
the dark about the exact reasons for that action on AFRINIC's part.  These
matters have been under legal adjudication for some time now and as a result,
as far as I personally am aware, AFRINIC has been rather entirely tight-lipped
about the exact cause of its efforts to reclaim these blocks.  If anyone else
has some accurate and definitive information about this, I would be very happy
to receive that.

That all having been said, I think that in the absence of a specific statement
of the matter from AFRINIC officials it would be a mistake to jump to the
conclusion that AFRINIC has attempted to reclaim blocks from Cloud Innovation
due to some considerations relating specifically to geography.

Rather, it is my (perhaps imperfect) understanding that AFRINIC has attempted
to reclaim blocks from Cloud Innovation due to the latter's failure to
properly inform AFRINIC, as required under the terms of the RSA contract,
of a change in the circumstances of usage of those blocks, relative to the
justification(s) that were used to obtain those blocks originally.  If that
is correct, then the change(s) in question may or may not have related to
the geographical location where the blocks were originally planned to be
deployed and/or to the geographical location where they actually were,
ultimately, deployed.

I can easly envision that perhaps some other change in the nature of the
usage, relative to the original justification, may also have taken place
in this instance, and that this additional change may not have been duly
reported to AFRINIC as required under the RSA contract.  If so, that
would be a reasonable basis for AFRINIC to terminate the contract, in my
opinion.

For example, if one wished, initially, to use a an IPv4 block for running
proxies, e.g.  to enable people to (illegally?) end run around the Great
Firewall of China, then it is easy to understand why a great many individual
IP addreses would be needed.  On the other hand, if, at some time after the
allocation was made, the registrant changed course and decided to use the
allocated IP addresses for web hosting (where anyone can easily use a
single IP address to host literally thousands of web sites) then this is,
I think, a material change in the nature of the usage, and one which would
both (a) oblige the registrant to notify AFRINC of the change in usage and
it would be a change in usage which would also (b) effectively invalidate
the original IP space justification.

This all may have happened.  I really just do not know.  If it did happen,
then none of this would involve or implicate geography in any way, thus
rendering all debates about using IPs inside of Africa or outside of
Africa rather entirely irrelevant, if not to say downright silly.

It is certainly a hot topic of conversation as to whether or not registrants
which be either permitted or encouraged to use their AFRINIC-supplied IP
addresses outside of the region and/or to transfer them outside the region.
I just don't want anyone to become confused or to improperly and incorrectly
conflate the topic of geographical restrictions with the topic of what
prompted AFRINIC to try to reclaim the blocks allocated to Cloud Innovation.
It is NOT clear, to me at least, that there is any relationship at all
between these two topics.


Regards,
rfg