Re: 44/8

[John Curran <jcurran () arin net>]

On 22 Jul 2019, at 4:44 PM, Matthew Kaufman <matthew () matthew at> wrote:
> ...
> There's a bit of magic. If ARIN's board of directors decided to up and start taking people's existing IPv4 
> allocations and selling them to Amazon to beef up the ARIN scholarship fund, the recourse would include going to IANA 
> and noting that ARIN was no longer behaving as a responsible registrar for the global community it serves.

Hmm – a rather interesting thought exercise.   Rather than belabor the point, I shall simply suggest that in such 
circumstances you might find yourself far better making use of mechanisms available both in the ARIN bylaws (and under 
Virginia state law for a non-stock membership organization) to address such a matter, but that’s based on my perhaps 
imperfect knowledge of the situation... 

> Here the amateur radio community has noted that ARDC's board of directors has decided to up and start taking people's 
> existing IPv4 allocations (including a /15 in use by the German amateur radio community) and selling them to Amazon 
> to beef up the ARDC grant fund (without engaging with the global community of radio amateurs who thought that net 44 
> was being held in trust for them, or engaging with even those entities/individuals who'd already been allocated 
> address space in the block). But because ARDC isn't actually an IP address registrar of global IP space for its 
> community as delegated by IANA, we're left with grasping at ARIN for some accountability here.


It is both touching (and somewhat disquieting) that you view the RIR system being the only available source of 
community accountability, but it is not correct – ARDC has significant obligations as non-profit public benefit 
corporation in order to remain a valid legal entity.   I imagine that there is now significantly more engagement 
between the amateur radio community and that organization, and one hopes it can be positively directed to further 
digital communication by the amateur radio community. 

Thanks,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers