[ncc-services-wg] 2012-07 Discussion Period extended until 21 February 2013 (RIPE NCC Service to Legacy Internet Resource Holders)

On 06/02/2013 00:17, Randy Bush wrote:
> i lost a small intra-author discussion in which i asked it to be
> explicit that small fee for ncc services would be paid (but not for
> rental of integers).  would that make you happier with 2.4?

sorta, but it's a little more subtle than that.  The issue isn't payment
but how the payment should be made.

We're all agreed that any talk of renting integers is silly now that the
standard charging mechanism put an end to that (which makes lots of things
much simpler actually).  A services fee is appropriate, imo, but I believe
that this would be better handled via a sponsoring LIR for the same reasons
that apply to 2007-01.

When 2007-01 became policy, the RIPE NCC originally provided a mechanism
for a direct relationship and I'll be brutally honest in saying that I was
horrified when they jacked that price up to the same as the membership fee,
while keeping the sponsored fee at €50 - this wasn't what I intended at all
when writing the policy; nor was it explicitly precluded by the policy.

In retrospect it actually worked rather well.  The RIPE NCC is a registry,
not a registrar, and it would not benefit anyone for them to turn into a
billing operation with a small registry arm on the side - or to compete
with their members for registrar services.  It also seems that there aren't
big roadblocks to PI end users getting LIR sponsorship contracts in place -
there are plenty of LIRs knocking around and they're all on the same footing.

This allowed the RIPE NCC to dispense with the direct relationship
arrangement for 2013 onwards (even though I note that they didn't ask or
receive RIPE community support for a policy proposal to back this change),
which has reduced the number of contract templates they need to deal with
by one.  This will reduce their paperwork, costs and overhead and there is
inherent virtue in simplifying the bureaucracy involved.

So from this context, I just don't see the need for 2.4. It's not that I
have a major objection to it - it's simply that we have a precedent to show
that it's not just unnecessary, but that it will increase the cost of
implementation of this policy.

We could go down this road again, but we've been there and done that and
found it to be, well, slightly pointless.  I'm happy that we don't need to
go down the road again, but it's not a huge issue one way or another.

Nick