[ppml] ARIN IP conservation and FREE IP Addresses

At 11:15 AM -0400 10/6/07, William Herrin wrote:
>Politics 101. You were elected by convincing the people who show up
>and vote that you'll give them what they want. The board, including
>yourself, was elected by the members based on the members' belief that
>you and the rest of the board would act in a "fair and appropriate"
>manner. In context, "fair and appropriate" means "not unfavorable to
>us." Such is the character of representative democracy and the board
>has done a generally good job of delivering what the voting members
>desire.

Thanks!

>Should some situation come about where the board implements a
>conservation-driven fee structure, it wouldn't be 5 days before a
>policy proposal showed up on this list directing ARIN to structure its
>fees in direct proportion to the relevant operating costs. Nor would
>that proposal have a hard time winning passage. Nor would the board
>member who pushed the original fee change win reelection. This is the
>political reality. The x-large members have the votes.

In some RIR's, I believe that there are voting structures which
are not flat (i.e. not 1 member, 1 vote) but instead based on
address space held or member size.

In ARiN's region, we have more than 2800 members, and xsmall
through medium far, far outnumber large + xlarge (I'll get the
exact breakdown posted as soon as possible)  Given our 1 member,
1 vote structure, the x-large members really can't control the votes.

I'm not denying that there would be fallout from a restructuring
of fees, but that is true of any major change to the fee schedule.
This should not prevent members from suggesting fee structures
that they feel is fair and appropriate to all.

/John
Chair, ARIN

p.s.  I'd recommend moving this from PPML to arin-discuss, since
we've left the topic of policy and moved to ARIN's voting structure.