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Court Says Customers May Take IPs Away From ISP
Jeremy Kister writes "According to a post on the North American Network Operators Group mailing-list, The State of New Jersey has issued a temporary restraining order, allowing a former customer of Net Access Corporation (NAC) to take non-portable IP Address space (issued from ARIN), away from NAC." The post argues: "This is a matter is of great importance to the entire Internet community. This type of precedent is very dangerous. If this ruling is upheld it has
the potential to disrupt routing throughout the Internet, and change practices of business for any Internet Service Provider."
This is like taking your home address with you, when you move.
"But I want to live on 115 Baker Street". How can a judge get that dumb.
nosig today
Unlike the whole "keep your cell-phone number" jiberjoo, this is unneeded and will do nothing but break the internet, will it not?
Isn't the whole DNS system set up to avoid the need to keep your numeric address? I mean, it's irrelevant if it only takes 5 minutes for my new IP to propogate.
Oh well, I hope this breaks the internet. I'm sick of the internet.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
... but you don't want to pay for it. Take my word for it.
Mod me troll, if you must, I can't help it.
This really shows the need for more technology savvy judges.
I imagine the thought process was something like: "Hey, if we can have cell number portability, why can't we have IP address portability? Same thing, right?"
Some people are like slinkies--basically useless but they bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs.
This will surely be compared to WLNP, but its different in one key way. The internet has a built in system that alleviates the need for IP Portability, that system is called DNS. Regardless of how many times you change IPs, your domain name can remain constant.
Lets pray the courts don't start setting technical policy more than they already are. How long before I have to enter my MAC address at every console just to make sure any random ARP packets intended for a machine I was just at still get to me here?
Josh
How many roads must a man walk down? 42.
Matters relating to the internet should be outside the jurisdiction of such judges. The internet isn't a local thing, it crosses national borders. Allowing any non-global entity to pass judgement on a portion of the internet is one step towards fragmentation.
And talk about turn the DNS system into a tangled weave of crap. This type of thing will completely nullify the idea of ip-address ranges.
To be honest, I was half-way afraid the Slashdot crowd would hail this ruling as a strike for the "little guy", but of course most of us are at least a little more technically savvy than the average judge... I think that it is probable (and clearly this is the case with the Judge) that most people think of IP addresses like phone numbers, which of course is not the case.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
How stupid can these courts get? Why on earth would someone need to take their IPs with them? If they've configured things such that they're dependent on a certain IP, they obviously have very incompetent system s staff.
This is what DNS is for, so you can plunk any IP in and have it resolve properly.
It's still ridiculous that the judge doesn't have enough brains to toss the case right out. The numeric address space belongs to NAC, a domain name (if registered) belongs to the plaintiff.
Like another poster said, this is like wanting to keep your street address and zip code when you move across country. Imagine how well the mail system would work when my address is "129 main st, smalltown PA 21132" and I live in an igloo in Alaska.
Obviously he doesn't know how TCP/IP works, how the IP address space is organized, or what DNS is (your DNS domain name is your "address", not your dotted-quad IP).
It's dangerous having these jokers ruling on cases like this. Small-time judges like this one tend to have a god-complex, and just love the chance to legislate from the bench.
The upside is, if he pulls it off, it'll give the RIAA a hell of a time trying to subpoena ISPs for information based on IP. They'd have no way to know who owns which address.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Ok, he takes a block of IP addresses, and connects to his new ISP. Surprise, nothing works!He calls the ISP and they laugh. He sues, and a different judge rules he can't force the new ISP to use his old IP addresses.
So a block of IP addresses is gone permanently from the internet. Well, at least until overturned on appeal. At the moment, it's not much different from companies sitting on large blocks of addresses and refusing to give them up.
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
This is only akin to telephone number portability if people needed to know what port to switch to at the company. You know like in the old days where they had actual plugs that they moved? DNS is the phone number, and it already is portable. That is the whole idea behind dynamic. Moving an IP is like keeping the port the phone company switches you to. It really is useless to anyone except the phone company or ISP in this case.
Theres no reason that a judge should be expected to understand DNS and the Internet routing, any more than you should understand property conveyance law.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
If average people cannot vote and decide about nuclear power, however uneducated they may be, who should decide?
If the average person has the power to vote for a leader, and that leader has the power to implement nuclear power, then there isn't much difference in putting anything to the vote.
The reality is, we have to respect everyones opinions for what they are, no matter how irrelevant they may be.
I agree with you though about the judge, in terms of law, this is about right and wrong, and in terms of is someone entitled to keep an IP address, isn't it simply a case that it never belonged to his ISP in the first place? only through licensing?
I thought ICANN had the final word?
Seems strange to me!
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
No, judges are not simply ignorant because they haven't been studying computers and using the internet for the past 10 years. Judges must work within the boundaries of the law, and in many cases, the law is not equipped to deal with modern circumstances such as IP addresses. I didn't get a chance to look into the details of this yet, but neither did the judge. That's why he issued a temporary restraining order, and not a permanent decision.
Actually not true since your IP will now be "static" and can be almost guaranteed to point to you. If anything this will make the RIAA's life easier since they will only need to do a name lookup against the DNS (or whatever protocol gets created to manage this) to find out who owns the IP.
Its a little bit like phone numbers which are indeec portable, but only within a network.
(Try taking your phone number accross a country boundary for instance).
Jeroen
Secure messaging: http://quickmsg.vreeken.net/
Wrong. DNS names like Slashdot.org are like Phone numbers. You can redirect where they point to. IP's are like your house address. Try getting the post office to deliver to 1600 Pensylvania Ave, Washington DC, USA with the house in somewhere in Europe. Moving the IP's takes a change in the configuration of the internet routers.
Much different from cell phone number portability. When you want to call mom you key in a 7-10 digit address to ring mom's phone. Most users won't key in "mom". If mom changes her phone number she has to tell everyone her new number, so even if you set up a voice dialing entry, you're not isolated from having to know her number at least once so you can update your phone book entry.
However, when you want to do a keyword search do you type in 216.239.57.99 or do you type in google.com?
When you check your email do you type in 64.4.32.7 or do you type in hotmail.com?
When you want to look at porn do you type in 64.71.165.211 or do you type in thehun.com?
Have you *ever* seen those IP addresses before today? Probably not. You don't need to know them to reach them.
Do you have any idea that when you type in thehun.com, sometimes you see 216.218.206.40 and sometimes you see 64.71.165.211 and sometimes it's 216.218.255.232? Would you know if they changed? Would you know if there were a hundred of them? This stuff is kept hidden from you by DNS for a reason.
If a user ever needs to see an IP address, someone has done something wrong. The purpose of DNS is to make physical IP address assignments irrelevant.
And not only is it dumb, but it's extremely hard to do. IP address networks are segmented, and routers need to be able to rely on cases where it can say "Well, I don't know what's on the other end of this network, BUT I DO KNOW FOR A FACT THAT *THIS* END *ALWAYS* HAS ADDRESSES IN THE 216.139.128.x RANGE!"
Doing this will cause routing tables to grow exponentially if it continues unchecked, as it greatly reduces the hierarchical, logical nature of IP addresses and how they correspond to geographic providers of bandwidth.
This is bad, this is VERY BAD for the internet. I appreciate the person's concerns, but there is already a solution out there for portable addressing. It is known as DNS. They need to update their DNS records to point to new IPs from their new ISP, not strong arm their old ISP through the legal system into breaking the internet.
This is a failure of the legal system which will cause lasting damage to the internet, in my humble opinion.
"Give away the stone, let the oceans take and transmutate this cold and faded anchor." - Maynard James Keenan
Research? How much research did you do on it? 2 seconds of reading comments on Slashdot? I know that's all I've done, and I'm willing to admit it, and give the judge the benefit of the doubt. S/He's issued a temporary restraining order in this case. Are you ignorant to the fact this means that the case is still open and under review? Would the judge not also be ignorant if he just threw the case out without looking at it closely enough? Generally, a restraining order prevents any further damage from being committed while the case is under review. Yes, it may be true that the complainant has no legal argument, but in our legal system we give a benefit of the doubt to victims and complainants. The judge in this case took a quick look at the facts, thought the case had some merit, and decided to take a closer look at it.
A dns entry is more like a telephone number and that is what should be used for portability. A phone switch can get a local routing number for any dialed number. There is not really any way for a router to do the same for individual addresses in a reasonably efficient way.
This is a temporary order by the judge and I'm sure once he has a chance to understand the technical and logistical issues the correct decision (non-portability of ipv4 addresses) will be made.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]
In some ways I'm not sure how this is different on the surface from cell phone number portability.
The big difference is that phone companies don't buy their phone numbers off the government, whereas ISPs do pay for their IP ranges. Ignoring the technical side of things (block routing), this would be equivalent to a customer switching his car rental from Hertz to Avis, but insisting that he be able to take the same physical car with the other "provider". Even worse, in fact, since the car in question is the property of the rental agency, which could make a deal to sell it to the competition, whereas an IP range is only leased by an ISP and can't be resold.
#!/usr/bin/english
So what's the big deal? Sure, the customer in question has a severe case of recto-cranial inversion. But why is everybody saying that this TRO heralds the doom of the route tables?
The judge doesn't know the technical issues, so he's issued the TRO to keep things static until he can examine everything and issue a ruling.
Note that the judge isn't insisting that the customer be able to take his numbers, just that the ISP can't prevent it. In other words, they can't BGP-advertise those numbers, or sell them to another customer, etc. The judge is just asking (okay, ordering) the ISP to set those IPs aside for the time being. If the customer can find somebody who'll advertise 'em, then that's fine too.
In a little while, the judge will have studied the situation, and gotten amicus curiae briefs, and probably expert testimony, and will issue a fair ruling (which, I expect, will tell the customer to go away and quit whining about his IPs). But for him to be fair in his ruling, he has to make sure that those IPs aren't recycled first, and that's why he issued the TRO.
The article makes it sound like the judge ruled that the IPs are portable; even the subject says it: "Can a Customer take their IP's with them? (Court says yes!)". The article talks about this as a ruling that may set a precident. It's just a TRO; the judge is putting the brakes on things until he can figure out what's what. There's no ruling, there's no precident, and I expect everything will go back to normal soon.
HOW temporary is it? How long will it take to arrive at a permanent decision? How about the appeals process? Will it be like this all the way to the Supreme Court?
Besides, what will the plaintif do with their address block? They can take the numbers with them, sure. But how will the judge order other networks to route traffic to those addresses? Does this judge think Taiwan and Germany are in his jurisdiction?
This judge is not only ignorant of technology, he is ignorant of legislation as well. Apparently he has never heard of international agreements.
Of all the posts in this thread, only about 5 have a clue what's going on here, the rest have been hysterical rants about how this is going to break the internet, screw over the defendant and other such nonsense.
The defendant was agressively trying to steal this guys business which he's actively trying to relocate, but the defendant is jerking him around and generally acting like an ass.
The TRO was both justified and reasonable. Temporary routings are typical when a large netblock user moves to a new provider.
This guy was more then willing to continue paying them for the redirect service and had negotiated several times with them on contract terms which the defendant agreed to, then completely rewrote when they penned the agreement.
Complete jerk is what I'd call the defendant.