Mailing List Archive

On 19 Sep 2022, at 11:08 PM, John Curran <jcurran@arin.net<mailto:jcurran@arin.net>> wrote:


On 19 Sep 2022, at 10:48 PM, John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com<mailto:gnu@toad.com>> wrote:
...

Is there a public archive of these court proceedings? Or even a list
of which cases have involved ARIN (or another RIR)?

John -

Not to my knowledge for ARIN - we are routinely involved in various civil, criminal, bankruptcy and
probate matters as necessary to protect the rights of the resource holders (in cases where they are
being hijacked or otherwise converted by parties not affiliated with the registrant) and the rights of
the ARIN community (in cases where parties attempt to dispose of number resources contrary to
community-developed policy.) We do not publish an index of cases, but those cases that are
public matters are available in appropriate court record searches.

John -

It occurred to me that there is a discussion of many of the legal aspects in the transfer
of IP address blocks (from ARIN’s view) including references some of relevant cases that
have been through the courts contained in the following 2013 ABA article written by Ben
Edelman and ARIN’s General Counsel (at that time) Steve Ryan –
https://www.americanbar.org/groups/business_law/publications/blt/2013/05/03_edelman/

While this doesn’t provide a list of the legal proceedings, it does provide reference to some of
the more seminal ones as well as provide pointers to several examples of orders that have
occur in bankruptcy events (the most common circumstances that ARIN ends up involved in)

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

An important detail in the CI case is that there was no PDP based change in the policy text, AFRINIC simply suddenly contradicted their own prior statements and began (mid)interpreting their own governing documents to say things that they don’t actually say.

Owen


> On Sep 19, 2022, at 19:49, John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com> wrote:
>
> ?John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:
>> [challenges by legacy registrants] has been before judges and resolved
>> numerous times.
>>
>> We’ve actually had the matter before many judges, and have never been
>> ordered to do anything other than operate the registry per the number
>> resource policy as developed by this community – this has been the
>> consistent outcome throughout both civil and bankruptcy
>> proceedings.
>
> Is there a public archive of these court proceedings? Or even a list
> of which cases have involved ARIN (or another RIR)?
>
> What can the community learn from what help resource holders have asked
> courts for, and what help they eventually got?
>
> John
>
> PS: Re another RIR: There's a short list of some of the ~50 lawsuits
> against AFRINIC in its Wikipedia page:
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AFRINIC#Controversies_&_Scandals
>
> These are mostly to do with corruption, theft, and harassment. But an
> important subtheme includes what power AFRINIC has to seize IP addresses
> that were legitimately allocated to recipients. In the "Cloud
> Innovation" case, CI got addresses under standard policy, but years
> later, as I recall, AFRINIC tried to retroactively impose a new "no
> renting vm's" policy and a new requirement that all the addresses be
> hosted in Africa, even by global customers. After AFRINIC threatened to
> immediately revoke CI's membership and take back the addresses over
> this, CI sued AFRINIC to keep the status quo, keeping their business
> alive, while the courts sort out whether AFRINIC has the power to do so.
> Since then, it's mostly been procedural scuffling and some bad faith
> negotiations. If neither party goes bankrupt nor settles, it's possible
> that the courts of Mauritius will answer the question about whether
> their RIR has the power to impose new policies and then reclaim
> allocated addresses for violating them.

Why not publish such a table?

It shouldn’t be a particularly difficult task and could prove rather enlightening.


Owen


> On Sep 19, 2022, at 20:09, John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:
>
> ?
>>> On 19 Sep 2022, at 10:48 PM, John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> John Curran <jcurran@arin.net> wrote:
>>> [challenges by legacy registrants] has been before judges and resolved
>>> numerous times.
>>>
>>> We’ve actually had the matter before many judges, and have never been
>>> ordered to do anything other than operate the registry per the number
>>> resource policy as developed by this community – this has been the
>>> consistent outcome throughout both civil and bankruptcy
>>> proceedings.
>>
>> Is there a public archive of these court proceedings? Or even a list
>> of which cases have involved ARIN (or another RIR)?
>
> John -
>
> Not to my knowledge for ARIN - we are routinely involved in various civil, criminal, bankruptcy and
> probate matters as necessary to protect the rights of the resource holders (in cases where they are
> being hijacked or otherwise converted by parties not affiliated with the registrant) and the rights of
> the ARIN community (in cases where parties attempt to dispose of number resources contrary to
> community-developed policy.) We do not publish an index of cases, but those cases that are
> public matters are available in appropriate court record searches.
>
> Thanks,
> /John
>
> John Curran
> President and CEO
> American Registry for Internet Numbers
>
>
>
>

Owen -

It’s certainly worth looking into… Might you submit that idea into the ARIN suggestion process so it may
be formally considered? (ARIN ACSP <https://www.arin.net/participate/community/acsp/process/)

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

On 19 Sep 2022, at 11:58 PM, Owen DeLong via NANOG <nanog@nanog.org<mailto:nanog@nanog.org>> wrote:

Why not publish such a table?

It shouldn’t be a particularly difficult task and could prove rather enlightening.

Owen

On Sep 19, 2022, at 20:09, John Curran <jcurran@arin.net<mailto:jcurran@arin.net>> wrote:

?
On 19 Sep 2022, at 10:48 PM, John Gilmore <gnu@toad.com<mailto:gnu@toad.com>> wrote:

John Curran <jcurran@arin.net<mailto:jcurran@arin.net>> wrote:
[challenges by legacy registrants] has been before judges and resolved
numerous times.

We’ve actually had the matter before many judges, and have never been
ordered to do anything other than operate the registry per the number
resource policy as developed by this community – this has been the
consistent outcome throughout both civil and bankruptcy
proceedings.

Is there a public archive of these court proceedings? Or even a list
of which cases have involved ARIN (or another RIR)?

John -

Not to my knowledge for ARIN - we are routinely involved in various civil, criminal, bankruptcy and
probate matters as necessary to protect the rights of the resource holders (in cases where they are
being hijacked or otherwise converted by parties not affiliated with the registrant) and the rights of
the ARIN community (in cases where parties attempt to dispose of number resources contrary to
community-developed policy.) We do not publish an index of cases, but those cases that are
public matters are available in appropriate court record searches.

Thanks,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

On 9/19/22 20:58, Owen DeLong via NANOG wrote:
> Why not publish such a table?
>
> It shouldn’t be a particularly difficult task and could prove rather enlightening.

Individual trial court cases aren't generally published. There may be a
transcript at the local courthouse, but rarely available in any kind of
online database.

Appellate court decisions are more widely published as they are often
cited as precedent in future cases. Even in those cases it may be
difficult to find a freely available copy. While the decisions are
public domain, they aren't widely distributed. Legal publishing houses
find and "annotate" them making the annotated decision subject to
copyright. These are then paywalled.

ARIN could certainly, if they chose, produce a listing of the cases to
which it was a party as well as those where ARIN counsel was called as
an expert witness. Actual access to the text of such cases would be left
as an exercise for the reader.

--
Jay Hennigan - jay@west.net
Network Engineering - CCIE #7880
503 897-8550 - WB6RDV

On Tue, Sep 20, 2022 at 10:58 AM Jay Hennigan <jay@west.net> wrote:
> ARIN could certainly, if they chose, produce a listing of the cases to
> which it was a party as well as those where ARIN counsel was called as
> an expert witness. Actual access to the text of such cases would be left
> as an exercise for the reader.

Or ARIN could both enumerate the cases and publish the materials.
Since they were party to the cases, they already have the case
materials. I think there's some real merit in the suggestion from Owen
and John Gilmore.

Regards,
Bill Herrin



--
For hire. https://bill.herrin.us/resume/