[arin-ppml] Advisory Council Meeting Results - May 2010

[Owen DeLong]

On May 28, 2010, at 8:07 AM, <michael.dillon at bt.com> wrote:

>> I believe summary judgment to be an accurate definition to apply to
> the
>> behavior you describe.
> 
> Summary judgement is a legal term referring to judges who make a
> judgement
> without a full trial.
> 
> In this case, the AC meetings are not trials, and the AC members are not
> judges. There was no judging, no judgement. The AC simply discussed the
> policy proposals and assessed them according to the PDP and to the AC's
> own agreed practices.
> 
> To call the AC decision a summary judgement is out of line.
> 
> The fact is that the only policies that ARIN ever adopts are the ones
> Which have the *SUPPORT* of a majority of the AC. This is by design,
> i.e. the ARIN Charter and Bylaw writers intended it to be this way.
> 
I won't entirely agree with this.  It requires an affirmative vote of the majority
of the AC, but, that is not the same as support.

I have voted yes for several proposals which I did not support, but, which
I felt met the tests described earlier and which had support from a majority
of the community.

> Remember that the public does not vote. In a voting situation it can be
> worthwhile to split hairs and argue about marginal issues because if it
> changes even one vote, it can make a difference.
> 
The public does vote, but, those votes are purely informational in nature.

> But there are no votes here. If a policy does not have strong support,
> then a slight shift in the level of support is meaningless. The fact is
> that only policies with strong support get through.
> 
Yes, this is how it is intended.  However, there are votes. There are
votes by the community in the public policy meetings which are advisory
in nature and there are votes by the AC and the Board which determine
the final outcome of policy proposals.

Owen