[ncc-services-wg] 2012-07 New Policy Proposal (RIPE NCC Services to Legacy Internet Resource Holders)

Hi Nick,

> ok.  my main concerns about it are:
> 
> 1. it doesn't establish a quid pro quo between the erx holders and the ripe
> ncc.  It looks to me like all the obligations are on the RIPE NCC and that
> the ERX holders have no obligations whatsoever.  This is not - and cannot
> become - the basis of a functional relationship between the RIPE NCC and
> the ERX holders because the basis of any functional relationship between
> two entities must be a quid pro quo.

I don't agree at all with you here. The proposal says that the RIPE NCC has to deliver certain services (registry + reverse DNS) and that the legacy resource holders have to sign contracts (and very probably have to pay some money, like with 2007-01) and maintain their data in the registry.

The goal of the recent actions of the RIPE NCC was to make the registry data more accurate, and I think that is a very important goal. The RIPE NCC officially has no 'rights' over the legacy resources as they were given to the holders before the RIPE NCC even existed, so this proposal tries to provide a framework to establish a formal relationship so that the registry can be properly maintained.

> 2. there is a lot of talk about the rights of ERX holders in this document.
> I'm unclear on why the proposers believe that the RIPE community has the
> competence to issue statements of rights like this, given that they don't
> believe that the RIPE community has the competence to create policies
> concerning this address space.  You can't have it both ways.

I very much dislike your usage of the word 'competence'. I don't think it's appropriate here. The thing is that currently the RIPE NCC and the RIPE community have no rights regarding legacy resources. The legacy resource holders are afraid that signing contracts (directly or indirectly) with the RIPE NCC will make them lose certain rights.

The current template contracts distributed by the RIPE NCC (see http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/resource-management/legacy-space/template-legacy-space-agreement) contain text like "We are aware that from the moment that the address space mentioned above is registered in our LIR account, it will be considered as address space distributed to us by the RIPE NCC. It will then be subject to relevant RIPE policies and RIPE NCC procedures." and this is not acceptable to many legacy resource holders. The reaction to these texts was to explicitly make sure that rights were not lost in the policy proposal.

The problem is that the current situation for legacy resource holders seemed to be "If you want your reverse DNS to work you have to give up all your legacy rights to your address space". More recent communication from the NCC seems much more relaxed, but the contracts still contain that wording...

> 3. suggesting policy statements which cannot be undone by future policy
> statements seems...odd.

I fully agree, but I also understand that legacy holders don't want to sign contracts that currently let them keep their rights but in the future might take them away. The reason that this policy proposal is in the NCC Services working group is that legacy resource holders would like certain services like registry updates and reverse DNS to keep working and they don't mind contributing financially to running the RIPE NCC, but they don't want any address policies to affect them since that address space was not given to them by the RIPE NCC in the first place.

> 4. it's unclear to me to what extent the policy document represents the
> consensus viewpoint of the ERX holder community.

I'll leave that question for ERX holders to answer :-)

> I have a lot of other smaller concerns, but this is more than enough to
> start with.
> 
> In short, I can't really see how this document could become the basis of an
> agreement between the RIPE NCC and the ERX holders.  Daniel's email to
> ncc-services-wg of Aug 29 16:37:07 CEST 2012 seems like a much more
> sensible starting point.

I agree. I think we have to focus on "So what we have to decide as a community is: under which policies does the RIPE community allow legacy space holders to register their address space in the RIPE Internet Number registry. Nothing more, nothing less.". The recent actions by the RIPE NCC have caused some fear and frustration amongst the legacy resource holders, and the current policy proposal reflects that. The next version of this policy proposal should remove that and focus on what Daniel said (+ reverse DNS services I think).

Thanks,
Sander

PS: Daniel said in his post that "The RIPE community has carefully avoided to make legacy address space subject to address space *distribution* policies, such as utilisation criteria.". I fully agree with this, but unfortunately this is not reflected in the template contracts as mentioned above.