[routing-wg] Hijacking

In message <CAFV686c9UFoCipkZGnm49zyf0wR07QyFFVpnHUDhwX37WCLfSw at mail.gmail.com>
Jacob Slater <jacob at rezero.org> wrote:

>The NCC's contracts do not forbid individuals/organizations from hijacking
>prefixes that do not belong to them*. That isn't their job.
>The NCC is tasked with guaranteeing uniqueness. They are not tasked with
>enforcing implementation constraints on others, especially not on a legal
>basis.

We are, I think, talking at cross purposes.

My question did not entail or involve any kind of "enforcement".

When it comes to issues of routing, e.g. the gibberish currently coming
out of AS3266, I think that it is already well and widely understood that
the the one and only "enforcement" mechanism that exists is what might
simply be called "peer pressure".

Contractual terms are not always enforced.  If a contractual term existed
today in any of the contracts that RIPE does (or has) entered into with
any of its members, stipulating that the member shall not do X, and if
any of those counterparties went ahead and did X anyway, it would quite
obviously be up to RIPE's discression as to whether or not to enforce
the relevant contractual term.  And if the specific counterparty require-
ment in question were along the lines of "Thou shalt not hijack other
people's IP space" then I, for one, would certainly have -zero- expectation
that RIPE would ever actually enforce such a provision... and it would
certainly be RIPE's contractual right to never actually do so, if that
was its preference... which it clearly is and would be.

In short, I don't think that it takes all that much in the way of mental
gymnastics to tease apart the intent and spirit of a contractual term
and its enforcement.  These are clearly two separate things.

I suggest here what I hope will be a not very controversial notion,
i.e. that an entity whose job it is to assign bits of IP space to
various entities, in an orderly and disiplined fashion, might have
an interest in fostering a clear and common understanding that
various parties should make use of the space assigned to them, and
not that which has been assigned to others.

There are certainly innumerable ways in which this sort of common
community understanding could be fostered, either more or less
effectively.  For example, purchasing a TV advertising slot in the
middle of the SuperBowl would probably be a less than cost effective
way of getting this message across, perticularly given that something
well short of 100% of all RIPE members would be likely to see that.

In contrast, I think that it is a reasonable assumption to say that
very nearly 100% of all RIPE members do at least glance over the
contracts they sign with RIPE before they sign them.