ARIN asks Parliament to require ISPs to maintain Whois info

The organization responsible for allocating IP numbers to intermediaries in Canada is raising concerns there may no longer be a strong incentive for companies to keep updated records on IP number allocation or Whois information, and it wants Parliament to address the issue. A recently-published brief the American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) submitted to a House of Commons committee reviewing Canada’s copyright laws calls for Ottawa to require internet service providers and internet registrars to “maintain an up-to-date registry of the assignment of internet numbers.” And it said organizations which assign internet numbers to third parties should be “charged with a legal duty to maintain up-to-date Whois information.” “Ultimately, by applying a legislative or regulatory requirement to all internet number providers, it ensures that the burden of compliance falls on all stakeholders and that non-compliance cannot lead to a competitive advantage that diminishes the reliability of Whois information and impeded copyright and legal investigations,” the submission said. Whois is a system that allows for publicly searching records of names, locations and contact information of IP address or domain name owners, and is frequently used for legal purposes in law enforcement and in identifying copyright infringers. When asked about the proposals, an ARIN representative downplayed the language the brief used calling for new requirements for ISPs and large companies like Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft Corp. to keep updated records. ARIN’s Canada lobbyist said the point of submitting a brief to the committee was to inform policy makers and alert them to a potential future problem, and the organization is just looking for recognition that keeping the records fresh is important. “Currently, ARIN provides a database of significant value at no cost for Canadian civil society to use in enforcing copyright law and other activities,” ARIN’s general counsel Stephen Ryan told The Wire Report over the phone. “It would be useful to have the continued support and direction of the Canadian government to recognize the benefits provided by the industry’s provision of the registry.” In other words, they’d be happy with an acknowledgement from government saying, more or less, ‘keep doing what you’re doing’. But Milton Mueller, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology School of Public Policy who specializes in international internet governance policy -- and a former ARIN advisory committee member -- said the document sent to the committee surprised him and raises process concerns because it was quietly submitted to Parliament without a public debate about the controversial proposal at the organization, which has 5,896 members. “I think ARIN's community would be shocked to see its staff inviting national governments to regulate them without any discussion or vetting of this idea within the community,” he said by email, adding it would be a “bad idea” to fragment IP address policies or regulations along national jurisdiction lines. The submission to the House of Commons committee explains the underlying problem like this: under the old IPv4 numbering regime, there was a scarce supply of unallocated numbers. That let ARIN require companies to update their records before they dispensed new addresses. The supply of those unallocated numbers is now exhausted. By moving to the newer IPv6 numbering, where there’s no longer a limited supply and organizations can request them in large blocks, they don’t have to keep going back to ARIN to request more all the time, the brief explains. That’s raising concerns there’s no longer an incentive for organizations to maintain updated records, which can be time consuming and expensive. “ARIN will no longer have a mechanism to require compliance with maintaining up to date records of IP dispersals,” the brief said. “As no other regulatory or other mechanisms exist that would require this information be updated and preserved, it is likely that many organizations will rarely or never do so.” The brief argues the Whois registry is important in fighting copyright violations, which it notes is often a first step in identifying infringers, and warns about consequences for those records falling out of date. “The failure of persons entrusted with the assignment of internet numbers to third parties to maintain accurate records as to the users of those numbers and basic identifying information could wreak havoc in the ability of society integrate the internet into legal, political and business norms.” The House of Commons Standing Committee on Industry, Science and Technology wrapped up its public hearings on Canada’s copyright laws at the end of last year. ARIN officials did not appear before the committee during the hearings, in which just over 200 other stakeholders and experts testified, but the submission is still available online. The committee’s chair Liberal MP Dan Ruimy previously told The Wire Report that, ideally, the final report on its statutory copyright review will be tabled sometime in April or May. — With reporting by Kyle Duggan at kduggan@thewirereport.ca and editing by Anja Karadeglija at akarad@thewirereport.ca

ARIN asks Parliament to require ISPs to maintain Whois info

News | 01/04/2019 6:21 pm EST

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