[address-policy-wg] IPv4 Maintenance Policy

At 02:42 PM 4/19/2012 +0000, Milton L Mueller wrote:

>This aspect of the policy regarding legacy holders needs clarification:
>
>"Leave data as it is in the RIPE Registry. The Legacy Resource Holder will 
>not be able to add to or alter their data and will not have access to any 
>RIPE NCC services such as reverse delegation and certification."
>
>It is likely that in response to this policy legacy holders will choose to 
>use an alternate registrar for the services you are precluding them from 
>using (e.g., reverse delegation and certification). In that case RIPE NCC 
>will need to negotiate an interoperability or interconnection agreement 
>with these service alternate providers to ensure that a globally 
>applicable unique registration occurs.
>
>If RIPE NCC is not willing to do that, it appears to be attempting to 
>leverage its monopoly to force legacy holders into purchase and use of 
>their services, something that raises obvious competition policy issues. I 
>wouldn't advise you to do down that path.

The problem is not so much the whois database but rather the delegated file 
which is the more "official" data for all RIRs:
ftp://ftp.ripe.net/pub/stats/ripencc/delegated-ripencc-latest

When ARIN and RIPE did their ERX thing in 2003, ARIN mistakenly transferred 
4600+ IP blocks to RIPE with country=EU rather than country=xx.   There are 
numerous software packages that use the delegated data to do 
geolocation.  Examples:
http://code.google.com/p/ci-geoip/
http://16bytes.com/geo_locating-html/
https://metacpan.org/module/IP::Country::DB_File::Builder
http://www.codecodex.com/wiki/IP_Address_to_Country
So your IP block would not say your country code but rather EU.   There is 
one commercial firewall that uses the delegated data incorrectly as well 
and hides the details behind something more powerful than a firewall - a 
lawyerwall.

RIPE NCC is unwilling to fix this, unless one submits the legacy IP space 
to be listed under a LIR.

-Hank