[ARIN-consult] Reminder - Consultation on ARIN’s Membership Structure

[John Curran]

Matt -

The consultation is actually about opening up ARIN’s current membership (in which only ISP’s are general members) to be _more_ inclusive by allowing the 7000+ end-user customers to be ARIN members, and even be general members if they wish (and gaining the same voting rights as the existing general members.)

One option would certainly to be have everyone just be “general members”, but it’s fairly plain that some organizations just want registry services and have little interest in participating in ARIN governance activities (and this characterization applies to both those who are existing ISP/general members and to end-user organizations.)

These means that ARIN must walk a fine line in engaging its membership community - as Owen noted earlier, we need to make everyone aware of important events (an upcoming election, bylaw changes, etc.) but there’s a difference between ARIN notifying the community that there’s an significant governance event coming up and the ongoing community discussion of such events or even engagement on more routine governance matters.

There is no desire to create an impediment to members participating in ARIN governance - it’s actually the opposite - having a self-selected set of members who have expressed interest in ARIN governance matters will allow us to bring more things to the general members for discussion.  However, getting to that point does indeed have a cost for each general member - they will have to take a proactive measure at least once every three years to indicate that they remain interested in participating in ARIN governance.

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers


On Nov 8, 2021, at 10:07 AM, Matt Harris <matt at netfire.net> wrote:


[cid:image464166.png at 7C6A1F7D.BDF9F551]
Matt Harris​
|
        Infrastructure Lead


816‑256‑5446
|
        Direct






Looking for help?
Helpdesk<https://help.netfire.net/>
|
        Email Support<mailto:help at netfire.net>


[https://netfire.net/Flag-United-States-of-America.jpg]
We build customized end‑to‑end technology solutions powered by NetFire Cloud.






On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 5:33 PM John Curran <jcurran at arin.net<mailto:jcurran at arin.net>> wrote:
Alan -

Pretty much correct - if you are a general member and did not vote in any of the past three elections, you will become a service member for the coming year.   We intend to conduct that review annually after each election starting after the ARIN 2023 election.

FYI,
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers

Hey John,
What's the problem that this change seeks to solve, specifically? If a member only chooses to vote in every 4, or 5 elections, shouldn't that be the prerogative of said member and not subject them to sanctions such as being bumped down a category and losing the right to vote which is generally afforded to all dues-paying members?

Open questions to others to help me see the light on why this would be proposed...
Are there any other non-profit entities in the technology space that do this or something similar to this which and what have their experiences been? What benefits have they reaped from it?

How would the optics for something like this be anything but negative given that it would almost certainly open ARIN up to criticism for being less democratically-governed?

Thanks,
Matt

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-consult/attachments/20211108/31fc5970/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image464166.png
Type: image/png
Size: 14877 bytes
Desc: image464166.png
URL: <https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-consult/attachments/20211108/31fc5970/attachment-0002.png>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image464166.png
Type: image/png
Size: 14877 bytes
Desc: image464166.png
URL: <https://lists.arin.net/pipermail/arin-consult/attachments/20211108/31fc5970/attachment-0003.png>