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

[Owen DeLong]

> On Nov 8, 2021, at 8:36 AM, John Curran <jcurran at arin.net> wrote:
> 
> 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.)

No, it’s not. The fee change does that without the rules changed in the consultation.

The consultation is about disenfranchising that coming flood of new members unless they take a proactive step to opt into their new voting rights and about disenfranchising organizations that have not voted.

You can make the argument that this is a small poll tax, but it is still a form of poll tax, nonetheless.

> 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.)

And what is the problem with those organizations (continuing to) abstain from voting, but retaining their rights to vote?

> 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.

It should be possible to do this without taking away the voting rights for those who opt out of the discussion. As a registered voter in California, I don’t lose my right to vote if I skip a few elections. Even if I go long enough for my voter registration to be expired (which IIRC is something like 10 consecutive years of non-voting), I still have the ability to re-register for the next election.

> 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.

The alternative, of course, is to let those who desire to opt out of participation be the ones required to take a proactive measure of notifying ARIN of their desire to opt out.

Once you opt out, it is not at all unreasonable to require a proactive step to opt back in,
but IMHO, no member should be disenfranchised through an automatic process.

Owen