[anti-abuse-wg] 2019-03 and over-reach

JORDI PALET MARTINEZ via anti-abuse-wg wrote on 22/03/2019 22:55:
> The legal bindings of the NCC already have that for those that don’t 
> follow existing policies, don’t pay bills, etc. So, the proposal is 
> adding in the table a policy for confirming what is a hijack according 
> to the community consensus. Same way we did for how we distribute 
> resources, do transfers, etc.

Hi Jordi,

couple of things:

1. it's not the job of the RIPE NCC to make up for a short-fall of civil 
legislation in this area, no matter how distasteful we might find the 
consequences of this;

2. you can throw anything into a contract, but that doesn't mean it's 
enforceable or even lawful.

In other words, if the RIPE Community were to pass a particular policy, 
that wouldn't mean the policy would automatically be binding on the RIPE 
NCC membership, even if the RIPE NCC SSA includes a clause to state that 
a member will adhere to RIPE policies.

In this particular case, the suggestion is for the RIPE NCC to start 
making judgements about potentially legal actions between second or 
third parties, potentially involving non-related resources and to deny 
and/or withdraw number registration services on that basis.  This does 
not sound legally enforceable.

What complicates things further is that the RIPE NCC has an effective 
monopoly for internet number registration services in this part of the 
world.  If withdrawal of these monopoly services were found to be 
unlawful, this would be taken extremely seriously by any court or 
regulatory authority.

Nick