RIPE 81 Address Policy Working Group Minutes

Chairs: Erik Bais, Gert Doering
Scribe: Antony Gollan

A. Administrative Matters

Gert welcomed attendees and ran through the agenda. The minutes of the Address Policy Working Group session at RIPE 80 were approved.

Gert said his spot as WG chair was up for selection and he did not plan to stand again. At the last meeting, they had asked if anyone was interested in becoming a “trainee chair” to see what the position involved, and Leo Vegoda and James Kennedy had both volunteered. The actual selection would take place on the mailing list ahead of the next meeting. He added that others could still volunteer if they were interested. 

B. Current Policy Topics

Petrit Hasani, RIPE NCC Policy Officer

The presentation is available here:
https://ripe81.ripe.net/presentations/32-RIPE-81-Current-Policy-Topics_Final.pdf

Daniel Karrenberg, RIPE NCC, noted that Petrit had said the WG chairs’ decision on the PDP appeal was published but he couldn’t find this anywhere.

Petrit clarified that this had been sent to the Policy Announce and Anti-Abuse WG mailing lists, and it was also referenced on the archived policy proposal (both the appeal and the outcome).

C. Feedback from the RIPE NCC Registry Services (and a group discussion)

Nikolas Pediaditis, RIPE NCC Registration Services Manager

The presentation is available here:
 https://ripe81.ripe.net/presentations/36-RS-Feedback_RIPE81.pdf

As there was no time for questions, attendees were encouraged to send any comments to the mailing list.

D. Seizure of the “Right to Registration of IPv4 Addresses”

Ciaran Byrne, RIPE NCC Legal Counsel

The presentation is available here:
https://ripe81.ripe.net/presentations/30-Presentation-RIPE-81-Ciaran-Final.pdf

Erik Bais, Address Policy WG Chair, noted that he had been involved in this auction (in the interests of full disclosure). He asked what would happen if the seized IP resources were under transfer restrictions – would RIPE policies or the court order take precedence?

Ciaran said it would be RIPE policies and they would dispute the court order if the resources were under restrictions. 

Remco van Mook, RIPE NCC Executive Board, said he wanted to note that the board had discussed this at length and, while this was new for the RIPE NCC, there was nothing new about the legal side of this process; there had been similar cases for decades in Europe. So, while this had the board’s attention, there was nothing exciting about it.

Harry Cross, representing himself, asked if the resources could be transferred once the restrictions had expired (in cases with transfer restrictions).

Ciaran said that could be a possibility. This wasn’t something they’d thought about, but it would depend on whether there was some sort of expiry date before the other party needed to collect. In this case it was a liquidation and the liquidator probably wanted to close the company at some point. Provided this was in line with RIPE policies and RIPE NCC procedures, he didn’t see any issues. It would also depend on how long the Dutch courts would hold the pre-judgement attachment which prevented any transfers out of the account. This would depend on the individual case.

End of the session.