[rpd] [Community-Discuss] Unaddressed queries by AFRINIC during AGMM

[Fernando Frediani]

What bylaws have to do with rules about IP space usage resources ? Why 
does it keep been mentioned as something that can allow or disallow 
resource usage in or out of the region ? Please stop creating more 
confusion.
The rules the apply are ONLY what are the CPM and are made by the 
community in a bottom up process. Bylaws are not made in a bottom up 
process but by members only, so let´s just not use bylaws as a 
justification for this topic. Bylaws can only regulate membership.

Also please note that LACNIC goes in the same line than AfriNic about 
resource utilization out of the region. This was already confirmed by 
the RIR and some of its NIR staff as their understanding. This makes 
sense and goes in line with RIRs that simply didn't choose to go in the 
path of total liberalization because that is of the interest of a few 
specific companies who started to profit from the IPv4 exhaustion.

Now we have to believe in the fallacy that addressed were not 
distributed to RIRs in blocks and that RIRs have specifics rules made by 
specific communities with different needs just because of time-zones and 
convenience. If it was so simple to justify resources to be used 
anywhere there would be a global pool and global policies. Why then a 
global policy years ago was put in place to allocate a /8 to each RIR 
individually ? Following that logic this wouldn't be necessary.
What is wrong with "protectionist mentality" ? It is better to assure 
resources as used for what they have always been meant to be than they 
are free for speculation and missusage bringing not Internet benefits, 
social and economic benefits to the region.

It is very fair to hold resources in other they can be used for what 
they meant to be, and in/for the region, so for thrid-part companies 
come, establish a legal local company, get addresses from the RIR and 
lease it to some other organization from another region that according 
to the rules of their RIR are not allowed to get more IPv4 addresses in 
a clear way to circumvent the rules in place. The situation is the same 
for all, rules must apply equally so let's abide to them equally, not 
with beautiful words to try make wrong things right.

Fernando

Em 6/29/2021 6:01 AM, Owen DeLong escreveu:

>

>

>> On Jun 26, 2021, at 18:53 , Fernando Frediani <fhfrediani at gmail.com 

>> <mailto:fhfrediani at gmail.com>> wrote:

>>

>> In the recent times as IPv4 exhaustion advances it's becoming more 

>> and more common to see defenses for a total liberalization in a "no 

>> rules scenario" of IP space regulation using nice words as "new 

>> economic, technical, and legal realities".

>>

>> The reality is that that most benefited from that are only a few 

>> companies who financially benefit during these difficult times, 

>> regardless of things like fairness and economic and social 

>> development of a region. These actors know the value of this market 

>> will have its peak and then will start to come back down, so it is 

>> somehow understandable the pressure we have been seen to try to make 

>> some absurds like IP leasing to non-connectivity customers or use out 

>> of the region as something "normal and acceptable".

>>

> Regardless of who does and does not benefit, the reality is that short 

> of an actual government with the ability to enforce its rules using 

> guns and prisons, people who can make a profit are going to do what 

> they are going to do. I’m not particularly happy about this reality, 

> but I do recognize that it is, in fact, reality and I’m not in favor 

> of giving RIRs guns or the ability to incarcerate people. Contracts 

> only get you so far and clever people can always find ways to comply 

> with the letter of a contract while circumventing the other party's 

> intent if they want to try hard enough.

>

> So no, these are not “nice words”, they are the recognition of 

> unpleasant and inconvenient truths that like it or not, we are faced 

> with new realities, economic, technical, and legal.

>

> In many countries legal frameworks the lack of a transfer policy 

> allowing registrants to monetize the transfer of their registrations 

> could be considered either restraint of trade or an 

> anti-trust/anti-competitive matter.

>>

>> It is not by chance that some RIRs Community have chosen that 

>> majority of addresses must be used within in the region and the 

>> impacts it has on the social and economics of that region. It is a 

>> loss when every new company or entrepreneurship struggles to launch a 

>> new business due to the lack of addresses in the region that were 

>> taken way to be used elsewhere and these type of situations cannot 

>> simply be taken as "new economic, technical, and legal realities". In 

>> those scenarios where only a few actors earn their chunk of money 

>> regardless the losses to the region such movements can't be accept as 

>> something natural.

>>

> Which RIRs communities would that be? I believe you can only point to 

> one RIR that actually has such a policy on the books.

>

> Further, there is no lack of IP addresses, only a lack of IPv4 

> addresses. That is the new technical reality and the sooner we face 

> that head on, the better off we will all be.

>

> Addresses were never distributed to RIRs with the intent for those 

> addresses to be regionally restricted. Instead, RIRs were created for 

> the purposes of providing convenience in terms of time-zones, the 

> manageability of a policy forum for the community, and to some extent 

> language support.

>

> This protectionist mentality about regional restrictions on addresses 

> is a very recent phenomenon.

>>

>> It was probably in the line of "new economic, technical, and legal 

>> realities" the some RIRs didn't choose to have soft landing phases 

>> which certainly leads to a significant unfairness to newcomers and 

>> new business coming up and also to a higher market concentration. 

>> Fortunately for the less economic-developed regions in the world 

>> (LACNIC and AfriNic) this didn't happen and this discourse of "new 

>> economic, technical, and legal realities" was not predominant.

>>

> Again, to the best of my knowledge, there’s only one RIR that chose 

> not to have a soft landing policy.

>

> How is it fair to hold addresses that are needed for use to day in 

> reserve for an unknown possible future need that may or may not come 

> to fruition before the protocol is rendered obsolete? That’s neither 

> fair to existing organizations, nor is it the best use of resources to 

> keep them on the shelf.

>

> Until very recently, within the ambit of legitimate need, internet 

> resources (names and numbers) have been issued on a 

> first-come-first-served basis. WIPO eventually managed to corrupt this 

> in the names arena by creating a tragic juxtaposition of trademarks 

> and domain names (which is incredibly poor because of the realities of 

> trademarks being multiple overlapping namespaces while any given TLD 

> is a single namespace). The classic example is that for decades, Apple 

> Computer (founded 1976) and Apple Records (founded by the Beatles in 

> 1968. In the trademark realm, because there is no likely confusion (at 

> the time) between a Record Label and a Computer Manufacturer, the two 

> uses of the same name did not conflict. Try that with Apple.com 

> <http://Apple.com> (which went to the computer company entirely 

> because of first-come first-served rules, but which under the messy 

> IANA processes can’t be subsequently claimed by Apple Records in a 

> trademark dispute because both trademarks legitimately hold the name.

>>

>> During the first discussions of Inter-RIR transfer policy, while 

>> AfriNic was still on Phase 1 of the soft landing we could see a big 

>> concern of several people about possibility of IP space be simply 

>> stolen from Africa and I believe that is still a concern of many and 

>> I doubt that these many would find it normal things like out of 

>> region usage or IP leasing.

>>

> Yet neither of those things is against current policy if one applies a 

> plain text reading of the rules. Indeed, it would take incredible 

> effort to contort the rules to claim they prohibit out of region use. 

> OTOH, given that nearly every single LIR in every single RIR engages 

> in some form of IP Leasing, I think it’s very difficult to claim that 

> this is either prohibited by policy or abnormal.

>

> If you think that they are against policy, please point to the 

> appropriate and relevant sections of the CPM, RSA, or bylaws.

>

> Wishing does not make it so. If you don’t want those things to be 

> considered normal, then either point to the section of policy that 

> prohibits them, or draft a policy proposal and try to get it to consensus.

>

> Until then, please re-read the CPM, RSA, and bylaws with a critical 

> eye considering the plain-text meaning of the documents and consider 

> what they actually say instead of what you wish they said or think 

> they should have said or think the community wants.

>

> Owen

>

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