[arin-ppml] clarification of Board actions Feb 2 and Mar 18, 2009

[Lee Howard]

The community has requested clarification from the Board on
the series of events and motivations that led to the emergency draft proposal
2009-1: Transfer Policy.

At its February 6, 2009 meeting,  the Board accepted the recommendation of the
Advisory Council, finding that the process had been followed, and adopted
policy proposal 2008-6: Emergency Transfer Policy for IPv4 Addresses.  The 
Board has been concerned for some time that the lack of a liberalized transfer 
policy would create legal risk: that we had not provided a mechanism to improve 
the efficient utilization of previously-allocated resources, and that this risk was 
significant enough to jeopardize ARIN’s ability to fulfill its stewardship mission.

The sense of the Board is that a transfer policy is needed well before IANA’s 
last IPv4 allocation, to allow early transfers and ease the demand for IPv4 
numbers from ARIN.  Allowing for the possibility that demand might increase 
as IANA allocates its last IPv4 numbers, the Board believes that there is 
insufficient time for another full policy cycle.  The policy in 2008-6 allowed 
the Board to activate it by declaring an emergency, which the Board did.
The policy had certain gaps which, in the Board’s opinion, allowed for 
exploitation.  As noted in the minutes of the February 6 meeting, the Board 
resolved to make certain edits to the policy that  had just been adopted.  
These edits were out of order: according to ARIN’s Policy Development 
Process, the Board of Trustees may (in emergency circumstances) suspend 
a policy or propose a policy, but may not edit the Number Resource Policy
Manual directly.  Therefore, at its March 18, 2009 meeting, the Board 
rescinded its action editing the policy, and proposed a new policy, which is 
2009-1: Transfer Policy.  The minutes of that meeting will be published once 
Board members have reviewed them, according to the published procedure.


The
discussion of Draft Policy  2009-1: Transfer Policy has provided
valuable 
input to the Board of Trustees.   The Board notes that this draft policy
includes substantial
changes to current policy, and encourages constructive 
discussion of the
draft policy as written.

Lee Howard
ARIN Secretary, but speaking without Board resolution