Sprunk said to the IETF:

"[ARIN] Counsel recently made a statement that it doesn't appear that
ARIN has any legal obligation to maintain registry services for legacy
assignments, though it does have a moral one since that was a
condition of ARIN's creation. Counsel also stated, however, it is
unclear that ARIN could assign those same numbers to someone else
later."

Sprunk's full message is at
http://www1.ietf.org/mail-archive/web/ietf/current/msg48312.html

One gets the impression from Sprunk's message that ARIN has a formal legal opinion and has made a decision of some kind about the legal rights of legacy assignments. ARIN has possession of no such formal opinion and ARIN has not made any kind of decision about its view of the legal rights of legacy assignments. This topic is being discussed on the ARIN-DISCUSS list by ARIN members and on the Public Policy Mailing List (PPML) by person's interested in public policy issues.

In fact, ARIN Counsel did not assert "that ARIN [doesn't have] any legal obligation to maintain registry services for legacy assignments". Counsel said nothing of the sort, as the full text below reveals.

Counsel acknowledges an agreement; a 'government give-away of rights without strings':

"I have never seen the United States government give away anything
without any strings attached before."

Counsel then notes that government contract holders' space was probably 'government furnished', and therefore should be returned at the end of contract. Counsel goes on to acknowledge there are indeed legacy holders to whom "carrots" rather than sticks must be offered. Implicitly, this denies the notion that those legacy's have no legal rights, as Sprunk implies. Counsel then acknowledges the special unencumbered value of this Legacy space: (emphasis added)

"Because there's a window coming that intersects with the IPv4
exhaustion issue, where for a brief time, these resources will
actually become financially more valuable if they were unencumbered,
and where that value will only be for a limited period."

In this section, Counsel says they can deny free services to people without an agreement. But virtually every Legacy in fact has an agreement in the form of a paper registration, a kind of license that doesn't terminate. My FAA-issued pilot's license also never expires. This agreement is with the Government. ARIN also has an agreement with the Government: to provide services to Legacy holders for free, in return for the opportunity and privileges to set fees and policy for new delegations. While Legacy's don't have a direct agreement with ARIN, both Legacy's and ARIN have agreements with the Government that bind ARIN. All that can be disputed is the terms of the agreement. Further, Mr Ryan notes that he hasn't thought much about it. He notes that an Act of Congress may be needed to take back this space. He notes that such an Act might not be constitutional. He notes he's only started to play with theories. These are just off-hand verbal statements at a meeting. They are not well reasoned formal legal statements.

"it's very clear to me that denial of service by ARIN is legally
permitted. In other words, I don't believe we, as the non-profit
trying to carry out the community's wishes, have a duty to provide
free services for legacy address holders. And the denial of those
free services to legacy address holders pursuant to their lack of
agreement is perfectly permitted, in my judgment, as a matter of
law. I've thought about it that far. I haven't thought carefully
about what would be the stick beyond denial of those free services.
And in my view, the two are quite different. The stick might be that
we -- for example, I've thought about whether I could ask the United
States Congress for authority to have the government obtain back
that which the government gave. I don't know if that's
constitutional, actually. I mean, I've started to play with different
theories here."

None of this is very definite.

So from an implied formal statement that 'legacies have no rights', that Sprunk reported, we've shown that Atty Ryan actually stated, informally:

That's a pretty big change in meaning from Sprunk and Curran. Sprunk has omitted the significant qualifications and context from the transcript, as I have cited, and which Curran also omits. Sprunk's report is indeed inaccurate and misleading, as I reported. Curran's support for Sprunk's report is similarly unfounded in fact.

I've identified a number of issues that Sprunk omitted. A close reading of Sprunk's email doesn't find those issues mentioned. Rather, reading Sprunk's report to the IETF one gets the impression that

  1. ARIN has in its possession a legal opinion that it in fact doesn't have, and
  2. that ARIN has made a decision that it in fact hasn't made.

Therefore, Sprunk's message to the IETF is misleading, and Curran stands corrected. IETF remains misled and deceived by incorrect reports of the actual events.

John Curran has also been misreading the statement, asserting incorrectly for example, that there was a formal statement when there wasn't such a statement. Curran has agreed to correction, but still asserts mysteriously that Sprunk is correct.

Someone should inform the IETF that Sprunk and Curran have misled them.

The transcript is here
http://www.arin.net/meetings/minutes/ARIN_XIX/ppm1_transcript.html#anchor_13

The complete relevant text is here:

MR. RYAN: Well, from a legal perspective, this is why I love you guys. I
have never seen the United States government give away anything without
any strings attached before. And so there's a real question in my mind
whether -- with regard to some of the legacy address holders who
received early addresses who were in the Defense or academic community
but held Defense contracts, whether the issuance of space at that time
was pursuant to traditional government theories of government-furnished
material or government-furnished equipment. The paper record is really
pretty strange when one looks at it. And it does appear -- to the extent
that I've had an opportunity to look at some of the paperwork -- that
it's one of the few times in the history of governments that they gave
away something seemingly without a clear set of strings attached to it.
I believe that those who are government contractors and who received it
as government contractors actually have the weakest case to argue that
they have some enhanced right over other members of the community in
this regard. And I'm still evaluating the legal theories that address
that. But looking more generally, there are clearly legacy address
holders who are not government contractors who did get early resources,
and who are clearly not covered by GFM, GFE -- any kind of theories with
regard to that. And with regard to those people, from my legal
standpoint as a person who has adopted the notion of RFC 2008 and all of
the sort of learning of the community, I think what we need to do is
fashion a -- I do think we need to fashion a policy proposal or a series
of proposals that creates a series of carrots, but not particularly
sticks, that would be intended to entice legacy holders to bring their
resources into the system, to give up those resources that they don't
need, and to actually come out of that process benefited as opposed to
being treated in a detrimental or in a pejorative or even a negative way
in any regard. And I think the sooner we adopt such a set of policies
that are well-thought-out by this community, the better off we'll be
legally as we address this situation. Because there's a window coming
that intersects with the IPv4 exhaustion issue, where for a brief time,
these resources will actually become financially more valuable if they
were unencumbered, and where that value will only be for a limited
period. So in that sense as a lawyer, I look forward to working with you
to try and describe mechanisms that are affirmative, positive, and that
entice people to feel that it is a civic duty, but maybe even a
beneficial civic duty, to perform in that way.

MR. CURRAN: Can I ask one question, Steve? And this is asking as Counsel
to ARIN. You said potentially, for those folks who have received legacy
addresses who didn't necessarily get them through government contracts
or GFE, that it might be useful to try to take an approach or a policy
or a set of policies or actions that entice them to participate in the
community -- the use of carrots, not sticks. My question is, is the
shying away from sticks because it's not felt ARIN has any useful ones,
or is it because of the liability that's entailed by doing that?

MR. RYAN: I've thought a little bit about what a stick might look like
here. So for example, it's very clear to me that denial of service by
ARIN is legally permitted. In other words, I don't believe we, as the
non-profit trying to carry out the community's wishes, have a duty to
provide free services for legacy address holders. And the denial of
those free services to legacy address holders pursuant to their lack of
agreement is perfectly permitted, in my judgment, as a matter of law.
I've thought about it that far. I haven't thought carefully about what
would be the stick beyond denial of those free services. And in my view,
the two are quite different. The stick might be that we -- for example,
I've thought about whether I could ask the United States Congress for
authority to have the government obtain back that which the government
gave. I don't know if that's constitutional, actually. I mean, I've
started to play with different theories here.