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

Hi Sander,

> 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.

I read it differently, in that there was no requirement for erx holders to
sign anything if they chose not to, and that if they chose not to, the
policy proposal required that the RIPE NCC would still provide services
indefinitely.  Could you confirm whether this is the case?

> 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.

Yep, I see the issue here, except that these documents are now redundant,
as far as I can tell from what Nigel said a couple of weeks ago.  Could
someone from the RIPE NCC clarify the position here?

My understanding - and again I am open to correction on this - is that we
are now where we were pre Oct 2011: everything is on the table for
discussion, ERX holders are able to update their objects as before and the
RIPE NCC are not moving forward with the mandatory ERX agreement that you
referred to.

> 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...

If the contracts no longer reflect the position of the RIPE NCC, this
should be made clear by either removing them or else by making a statement
to the effect that the URLs + contract are no longer applicable.  It would
be really helpful if we had a statement from the RIPE NCC on this.

>> 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.

Can the RIPE Community create a policy that the RIPE Community cannot
change?  I seem to remember that there are a bunch of somewhat narcissistic
philosophical treatises on this particular subject.

But at a more practical level, I don't really see that this position is
either possible or necessary.  It's certainly contentious.

> 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.

Completely reasonable.

>> 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 :-)

Nicely dodged :-)

> 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).

Ok.  In the interim, I think we need some clarity from the RIPE NCC about
the status of the content on the web tree with this root:

http://www.ripe.net/lir-services/resource-management/legacy-space

Nick