[arin-ppml] Future pressures on the ARIN policy process (Was: Use of "reserved" address space)

[David Farmer]

Keith W. Hare wrote:
> On Wednesday, June 30, 2010 12:33 PM, William Herrin wrote:
> 
>> Thoughts...
> 
>> It's $500/year extra as an end-user to vote. That's steep enough that
>> end user orgs by and large won't participate unless their vote has
>> been bought. ...
> 
> Meadow dressing.

I had to look that one up, never heard that term before.  For anyone 
else, cow patties, works too.

> As an end user organization that has been paying $500/year extra, I'm offended by this assertion.

I agree, for any real organization that would like to involve itself in 
this corner of Internet Governance, ARIN Membership and participation is 
fairly reasonable.  Yes, if your organization really doesn't really care 
then most any cost is expensive, but I'm not sure that is a bad thing.

Even participation in person at the meetings is not that that bad, 
typically a $1000 to $2000 in travel and lodging. (Probably more if you 
count the Bar tab, but I don't get to expense that, so that doesn't 
count :) )  A bit more if you add in NANOG at one of the collocated 
meetings, but that is still usually a good deal from a travel budget 
point of view.  And ARIN provides fairly good remote participation 
reducing costs significantly.

Compare that to participation in ICANN, IEEE, or the ITU, meaningful 
participation in those organizations, if you can even join, is going to 
cost you an order of magnitude or two more, 10 to 100 times.  I'll admit 
this is not an entirely fair comparison, those organizations play much 
different roles.



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