[arin-discuss] ARIN Election Processes and Email Campaigning

[John Curran]

On 16 Oct 2018, at 8:06 PM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com<mailto:owen at delong.com>> wrote:

Perhaps we should disallow election spam rather than changing the opt-in/opt-out policy for arin-discuss.

Owen - You have perfect timing, as I was about to send a message to reopen this discussion…


Folks -

Last week, while our election was underway, I sent the following to arin-discuss:  "Once this election is complete, we can then enjoy a discussion of whether any changes to our Whois terms of use (or our election processes in general) is warranted in this regard. "

I will note that ARIN’s 2018 election is complete – https://www.arin.net/announcements/2018/20181015.html

I’d like to congratulate all of those elected, and thank everyone who ran for the ARIN Board, ARIN AC, or the NRO NC.

With this election complete, it’s now timely to discuss the matter of campaign emails.  As many of you are aware, ARIN is required to provide the list of organizations that are eligible to vote in each election, and while we do not include email addresses in that list, each year we have several folks up for election who send emails to the electorate asking for their support.

ARIN’s stance on this has historically been that those people who receive the emails asking for support are in the best position to weigh the merits of each candidate and their email practices, and thus we do not specifically encourage or prohibit such communications in the election processes.  Similarly, ARIN’s terms of use for its ARIN Whois service does not specifically prohibit use of Whois data for election outreach purposes, and it is apparent that some candidates are using ARIN Whois to obtain related email addressed for their campaigning.

It would be good to discuss ARIN’s current stance on this issue, in order to inform the ARIN Board in their consideration if any change is warranted.

To the end, please comment on the question:  “Should ARIN’s election processes prohibit bulk campaign email  to the electorate, or is the present approach suitable as-is?”

Thanks!
/John

John Curran
President and CEO
American Registry for Internet Numbers



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