[rpd] [Community-Discuss] Call for AFRINIC’s registry service migration to other RIRs

[Fernando Frediani]

Owen, you simplify too much things to direct them to something that you 
may think is simple and easy, but it is not.

You can deny but in practice what Jordi and other of us say is correct 
that resources is owned by community and that is in practice simply 
because it is not enough that something specific is written in certain 
in a bylaw document. If sudden one RIR believes it can do whatever it 
likes with Internet Resources and all the other RIRs - the community - 
think otherwise, then that RIR will NOT get what those members wish, 
regardless what the bylaws say. It will not work. They will lose.

Therefore community collectively has the means (and the power) to stop 
any unilateral act that is not favorable to the whole community and so 
why there is a framework and a proper bottom-up process each RIR MUST be 
bound to including adapting its own bylaws to THAT reality and those 
principles and not the other way round. And if they refuse to do those 
words in the bylaws will simply not be enough to secure what they want 
in practice.

Stop getting into less important details and focus on the practice and 
reality of how the things really work.

Fernando

On 04/08/2021 20:34, Owen DeLong via RPD wrote:

>

>

>> On Aug 4, 2021, at 01:44 , JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via RPD 

>> <rpd at afrinic.net <mailto:rpd at afrinic.net>> wrote:

>>

>> Hi Owen,

>> If I create a company to handle you own personal assets, without 

>> having been empowered by you to do so, that invalidates the articles 

>> in the bylaws of my company.

>

> Well, it doesn’t invalidate them, but the company would never gain 

> access to my personal assets in the first place. As such, this example 

> does not apply to the current situation with the RIRs.

>

>> Will you agree on that?

>

> No. See above. The bylaws of the company remain valid, but the company 

> lacks the ability or authority to obtain control of the assets in 

> question.

>> The Internet Resources are from the community, not AFRINIC, not any 

>> RIR (maybe it is slightly different in the case of ARIN, we know, at 

>> least for the IPv4 ones). It is true that it is a complex legal 

>> battle to dispute that. That’s why it is easier that the Board, even 

>> if they need to consult with the membership, recognize the mistake 

>> and resolve that. One way is ratifying the policy that they decided 

>> not to.

>

> This is where our convenient use of imprecise (and even inaccurate) 

> terms gets us into trouble. There are seriously nuanced issues here 

> that require some clarification about the terminology we commonly use 

> and the incorrect thought processes it creates.

>

> So please bear with me as I’m sure some of the things I say below will 

> evoke negative reactions, but please do read through to understand the 

> full context of my explanations. Try to keep an open mind and truly 

> understand the deeper more nuanced way in which things are actually 

> structured. It’s truly a beautiful thing because it simultaneously 

> holds everyone accountable while avoiding any sort of super-powerful 

> central authority. Most impressively, it creates very very few 

> perverse incentives (at least up to the point where you start 

> attaching dollar values to registrations).

>

> There is no such thing as “Internet Resources”. There are integers. 

> Nobody owns integers. Nobody controls integers.

>

> There is such a thing as registrations of numbers for uniqueness among 

> cooperating entities for a particular purpose.

>

> AFRINIC is one of the 6 cooperating entities that currently operate 

> collectively as the central registration authority for a fiction we 

> collectively refer to as “The Internet”.

>

> In reality, there is no organization or actual structure of “The 

> Internet”, there is only a collection of independently operated 

> networks who happen to use a common protocol and happen to agree on 

> ways to exchange traffic and happen to agree on a common registration 

> system in the form of the RIRs and ICANN.

>

> This is useful and convenient, but it carries no force of law and does 

> not have any ability to grant rights or force behaviors. It can, of 

> course, make its issuance or persistence of registrations in its 

> database(s) contingent on compliance with a set of policies or rules 

> set by a process determined by the organizations in question.

>

> The internet resources are NOT from the community, they are integers 

> pulled from thin air. The registrations of those resources, on the 

> other hand, are managed in a hierarchical manner and come originally 

> from IANA (a function currently performed by ICANN) to the RIRs and 

> then to LIRs, NIRs, and End Users. Those registrations are entirely 

> under the control of the companies that operate the registries and are 

> entirely subject to the bylaws thereof.

>

> If you do not like this, of course you are absolutely free to 

> incorporate your own form of regional internet registry that gets its 

> addresses from whatever source you desire and manages its registration 

> database according to whatever policies your policy process you wish.

>

> Crafting the bylaws for such an organization will be very tricky 

> business, but have at it if this is how you wish to spend your time. 

> Another difficulty will be convincing anyone who controls a meaningful 

> router to consider the registrations in your new registry valid, but I 

> leave such things as an exercise for the reader.

>

> As a matter of fiduciary responsibility, the board simply cannot 

> ratify the policy as written because it is, quite simply, not 

> rectifying a mistake, but overriding the general structure of 

> corporate governance and moving control of a membership corporation 

> into the hands of an undefined group of people who may or may not 

> actually have any stake in the company. To the best of my knowledge, 

> this is not permitted under the laws of any country that I am aware.

>

> Perhaps such a thing is possible in Amsterdam, I don’t know. It is not 

> possible as near as I can tell from my reading of the Companies Act of 

> Mauritius. I’m pretty sure it’s not possible in the US.

>

> Owen

>

>

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