[address-policy-wg] APNIC temporarily freezing v4 transfers to RIPE NCC?

On 11/03/2015 09:38, Tore Anderson wrote:
> Indeed, that's how I understood Paul Wilson's mic comments after
> Andrea's APRICOT 2015 presentation, i.e., even though ARIN and APNIC
> transfer policies are compatible to begin with, the worry is that if
> transfers between the APNIC and RIPE regions commence without
> demonstrated need, than this fact would somehow «infect» the APNIC
> policy such that ARIN would no longer consider it to be sufficiently
> «needs based» and thus incompatible (even though the APNIC policy text
> would not change at all).

that is also my understanding - this should be fixed with the current
transfer proposal.  Although I found the statement from Einar Bohlin
(policy analyst at ARIN) disturbing:

> ARIN does not have policy regarding the relationship between RIPE and 
> APNIC.  So we don't have -- there is no policy text in our policy manual
> regarding that relationship.  There could be in the future but there is
> no such thing at this time.

The RIPE policy operates on the principal that once address space is
transferred in or out of a RIR, that for the duration of the transfer
(whether temporary or permanent), the receiving RIR policy applies and that
the sending RIR has no input on the resources.

Unfortunately, this is not respected in the ARIN inter-rir transfer policy:

https://www.arin.net/policy/nrpm.html#eight4

which includes the text:

"Recipients within the ARIN region will be subject to current ARIN policies
and sign an RSA for the resources being received."

In other words, multinational organisations headquartered in the ARIN
region who receive resources transferred to another RIR will be subject to
ARIN policies.

This is potentially a serious problem because transferring policy
encumbrances is likely to cause policy problems in future, if RIR policy
differences crop up.

So the question is: can the RIPE NCC accept transfers from ARIN if the
receiver organisation has signed the ARIN RSA for these resources?  And if
transfers are accepted within these terms and there's a conflict between
RIPE NCC policy and ARIN policy, whose policies takes precedence?  RIPE's
or ARIN's?

Nick