[arin-ppml] Policy Proposal: Clarify Board of Trustees Emergency Authority

[Member Services]

ARIN received the following policy proposal and is posting it to the 
Public Policy Mailing List (PPML) in accordance with Policy Development 
Process.

This proposal is in the first stage of the Policy Development Process. 
ARIN staff will perform the Clarity and Understanding step. Staff does 
not evaluate the proposal at this time, their goal is to make sure that 
they understand the proposal and believe the community will as well. 
Staff will report their results to the ARIN Advisory Council (AC) within 
10 days.

The AC will review the proposal at their next regularly scheduled 
meeting (if the period before the next regularly scheduled meeting is 
less than 10 days, then the period may be extended to the subsequent 
regularly scheduled meeting). The AC will decide how to utilize the 
proposal and announce the decision to the PPML.

In the meantime, the AC invites everyone to comment on the proposal on 
the PPML, particularly their support or non-support and the reasoning 
behind their opinion. Such participation contributes to a thorough 
vetting and provides important guidance to the AC in their deliberations.

The ARIN Policy Development Process can be found at:  
https://www.arin.net/policy/pdp.html

Mailing list subscription information can be found 
at:https://www.arin.net/mailing_lists/

Regards,

Member Services
American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN)

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Template: ARIN-POLICY-PROPOSAL-TEMPLATE-2.0

  1. Policy Proposal Name: Clarify Board of Trustees Emergency Authority

  2. Proposal Originator: William Herrin  
  3. Proposal Version: 1.0

  4. Date: 4/3/2009

  5. Proposal type: modify    
  6. Policy term: permanent

  7. Policy statement:


In the ARIN Policy Development Process (PDP) section 7.1, replace the 
sentence:

The Board of Trustees may initiate the Emergency PDP by declaring an 
emergency and posting a draft policy to the PPML for discussion for a 
minimum of 10 business days.

With the following text:

If faced with an extant problem for which a delay of six months is 
reasonably expected to have grave consequences, the Board of Trustees 
may initiate the Emergency PDP by declaring an emergency and drafting a 
proposal constrained to preventing actions which the Number Resource 
Policy Manual would otherwise allow. The draft policy must then be 
posted to the PPML for discussion for a minimum of 10 business days.

  8. Rationale:

Section 1 of the ARIN Policy Development Process (PDP) wisely excludes 
the Board of Trustees (BoT) from participating in the drafting of ARIN 
policy for inclusion in the NRPM. Such participation would mean that the 
same individuals both write and approve the organization's policy.

Historically, giving the same individuals  both the power to write 
policy and the power to approve it has demonstrated itself to be ripe 
for abuse.

Section 7 of the PDP exists so that if some mad genius comes up with a 
technically correct way to requisition all the remaining IP addresses, 
something can be done quickly enough to block it. It does not exist to 
allow the BoT a convenient way to forge new policy in violation of the 
section 1 proscriptions.

With emergency policy proposal 2009-1, the BoT exhibited an imperfect 
understanding of the purpose of section 7. This proposal seeks to 
clarify it.

   9. Timetable for implementation: immediate