[ARIN-consult] [arin-announce] ACSP Consultation 2021.5: Consultation on ARIN’s Membership Structure

[Andrew Dul]

On 10/29/2021 3:26 AM, John Curran wrote:
>
> As we’ve discovered in the past, there’s many organizations that simply wish to receive ARIN services and not be bothered with the various aspects of ARIN governance such as nominations, elections and petitions.
>
> Any service member that wishes to participate in ARIN governance can readily do but does pick up a rather light obligation to vote at least once every three years to maintain that right – and an organization that fails to do so only loses that right to be a general member for the coming year.
>
> If an organization wishes to participate an upcoming election, it simply needs to opt into general membership (including assigning a voting contact) before the list of eligible voters for the election is set – this happens approximately 45 days before the election (and is an existing requirement today or those who wish to support a petition; one must be an eligible voter for the election in order to participate in the petition process.)
>
Given that ARIN is giving all the end-users membership in 2022. Does 
ARIN plan to do an outreach to educate the end-users about the options 
available to them now as general members?  It only seems reasonable to 
me that ARIN do that so that old-end-users now new-service-members know 
they have the free right and option to vote and otherwise participate as 
general members.

Which is to say, I guess I'm ok with the conversion, and that by default 
end-user-orgs are put into the service-member category, but we should at 
least explain to them all this and let them easily decide and provide 
easy directions for them to become general members.  Something like, 
login to ARIN online, click this button, fill out who the voting contact 
will be.  Hit OK!

Thanks,

Andrew