[cooperation-wg] publication of data about legacy resources

In message <35B3918F-26C3-4450-9196-B93EFADF9E17 at rfc1035.com>, at 
13:28:24 on Mon, 22 Sep 2014, Jim Reid <jim at rfc1035.com> writes
>On 22 Sep 2014, at 13:06, Roland Perry <roland at internetpolicyagency.com> wrote:
>
>>> Well, we both know that for this specific case Roland the holding 
>>>entity does still exist. It just has a different name.
>>
>> Not really. The entity has been "reorganised", the address allocation 
>>used elsewhere within government via various departments concerned 
>>with "delivery" of government services. It's actually quite messy.
>
>True. But that's internal detail for the address holder which is nobody 
>else's business.

Sounds to me more like a transfer to me; the original address-holder was 
one specified department, not the whole of HM Government. Perhaps it 
would have saved a lot of grief if the original allocation had been to 
the latter in the first place.

>>> We understand that FUBAR is the current address holder and contact 
>>>for FOO/8.
>>
>> This is the crux - how does IANA come to the understanding?
>
>It could poll the holders of these /8s once a year. Or ask them to keep 
>the info about those allocations up to date. No big deal. There are 
>only a handful of /8s which could be problematical. And since IPv4 is 
>just about used up, it's hard to see why anyone should be worrying 
>about those legacy /8s. As I said before, if someone thinks this really 
>matters, they are welcome to feed their concerns into the IANA 
>oversight discussions.

Perhaps they will.

>> But it does matter if (one or more of): The building whose address is 
>>mentioned has closed, the phone numbers and emails don't work any 
>>more, the named person has retired, the addresses appear to be used by 
>>completely different bits of the government as well.
>
>Yeah. But this is no different from a teeny subset of the problem space 
>for whois in the context of domain names. All of the above concerns 
>(and more) exist for domain names. The world just has to cope with 
>that, even if the answers are not to everyone's liking.

In the case of /8's it's more like an entire ccTLD going off the grid.

>Frankly, I think it's a waste of time focusing on whois at all.

The entries in IANA's /8 table aren't really a whois, they are a hint at 
what one of the lines in the whois might be.

-- 
Roland Perry