[rpd] Questions for Alain...

[Owen DeLong]

> On Jun 5, 2018, at 21:04 , Chevalier du Borg <virtual.borg at gmail.com> wrote:
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> Le mar. 5 juin 2018 à 18:11, Mike Burns <mike at iptrading.com <mailto:mike at iptrading.com>> a écrit :
> “There’s nothing wrong with being a broker” – Owen
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> Thanks for that, Owen. 😉
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> More to the point, there is nothing wrong with a broker authoring policy.
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> I agree that it’s better to be open about being a broker when authoring policy.
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> Generally speaking in other part of world "There is nothing bad with being a broker". 
> However for Africa, there is EVERYTHING bad with being a broker. 
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> A broker take away IPs from a continent that does not even have enough to sell them for massive personal gain. That is exploitation of this continent the way the colonialist do before and some still continue to do with other natural resource.

That’s a gross mischaracterization of the current situation.

First of all, since there is no inter-rir transfer policy, brokers that are compliant with policy are NOT taking IP addresses away from Africa. All they can do is move addresses around within Africa.

Presumably, an organization that needs the addresses would not be giving them up.

Hopefully an organization that qualifies under AfriNIC policies for receiving a transfer and is willing to pay for the transferred resources has an actual legitimate need for those resources.

So really, all brokers are doing (legitimately under policy) in Africa is facilitating the movement of addresses from those with excess to those with need. I don’t see this as anything other than good.

> Brokers are TOXIC to the trust in this community. Brokers are not very different from the Arms Dealers sell weapons on the many wars on both side we have experience (we will get out profit, irrespective of the cost to Africa).  They general have no other interest in the development of this continent.

This is absurd. First of all, it’s hard to imagine how the movement of IP addresses would cause injury or death to anyone.

Second, as mentioned above, assuming the brokers are operating legitimately within policy (as many brokers do, and I would hope Alain intends to), then those brokers are not doing as you suggest. They are simply facilitating the movement of addresses from those with excess to those with need. This should, in the end, be somewhat of a benefit to the community.

While I’m not a big fan of the monetization of IP number resources in general, it is not the fault of brokers that this is occurring, and, whether I like it or not, the communities in the various RIRs have decided that this should be allowed under policy.

If you don’t like having a transfer policy, submit a proposal to repeal it. However, as long as there is such a policy, then brokers who operate within policy have a legitimate role and provide a useful service to the community.

Mike and I don’t agree often and I suspect he’ll be surprised to see me posting a defense of brokers in this instance. However, I also think if he reads my other writings elsewhere he will see it is not inconsistent with the position I have held since ARIN enacted the first specified recipient transfer policy.


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> However this thread began entirely as an ad hominem.
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> +1 to the previous poster who said it’s past time for Africa to get in sync with the rest of the world regarding the IPv4 market.
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> This community is generally AGAINST idea of African IP being used outside Africa for purpose that does not benefit Africa. Brokers may want that. We do not

I don’t think that’s at all related to this thread.

Brokers in Africa operating within policy in Africa do, however, stand to benefit from creating an artificial shortage of RIR-supplied addresses through ill-advised policies such as SL-BIS.

That’s what is being called into question in this thread now that it has come to light that one of the main authors of SL-BIS is, in fact, a broker.

Owen

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> Borg le Chevalier
> ___________________________________
> "Common sense is what tells us the world is flat"

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