[arin-ppml] Curious about consensus

[Ted Mittelstaedt]

On 4/25/2011 8:39 AM, Owen DeLong wrote:

>> The AC has always taken this approach, that by pushing a proposal that
>> has bad language but a good idea that this is going to push people
>> to fix the language.  Sometimes that happens and sometimes it doesn't and when it doesn't we get bad policy - and sometimes that gets fixed
>> by successive policy proposals.  Sometimes it doesen't and it takes something egregious (like this Microsoft/Nortal address grab) before
>> the bad/unclear language in the policy gets fixed.
>>
> I don't believe that is a fair characterization of our process.
>
> I do think that the AC sometimes moves policy forward with
> less than ideal language. Not because we are hoping that a
> proposal with bad language will push people to fix the language,
> but, because at the time we believe it is an improvement over
> existing policy and right or wrong, we generally believe that the
> language expresses our intent.
>
> For example, until recently, it had not occurred to me that
> there was any chance staff would misinterpret our intent in
> 2009-1/8.3 where we expected transferred resources to be
> subject to an RSA, not some form of RSA which might be
> LRSA, RSA, or something staff made up on the fly.
>
> We're human and we do the best we can. We make mistakes.
>

Baloney.  I stated 3 years ago on this list that the
transfer policy proposal advocates would screw it up.
Do you want me to provide links in the mailing list archive?

That is why the 1 year sunset clause compromise was made.

Then in an underhanded move the sunset clause was struck out
at the last minute.

The facts are in the archive and you cannot bluster your way
out of it.  The archives show that many people opposed to 2009-1
warned repeatedly of problems with it and were ignored.

If the thought hadn't occurred to you then it was only because you
were unable to read.

I find it unbelievable for you to imply 3 years later that
something like this "misinterpretation" over 2009-1 would come
as a surprise.

Transfer proponents were warned.  They were just were too full of 
themselves to bother to pay attention to anyone's warning.

> I do not believe that anyone on the AC deliberately moves
> what we believe at the time to be bad language forward
> hoping that someone else will fix it later. We spend a great
> deal of time working on the language of policies in general
> and for the most part, I think we have done fairly well.
>

They spend a lot of time watering them down.  One of the most
common tricks used by the AC to get policies through is to
water down the language so that either side of an issue can
interpret the policy the way they want.

I would not be surprised if an early draft of 2009-1 DID
require RSA and spell out the requirement for it - and then that
language was removed because of the claim that it interfered
with ARIN staff operations too much.  I know that this sort
of thing has happened with other policy proposals.


Ted

>> The only other way to do it is like the US government does which is unless the proposed bill is absolutely perfect with no objectors, that
>> even the most minority crank group can win by saying no.  And that is
>> IMHO a worse way.
>>
> That is not what the US Government does at all. Indeed, I would
> argue that you get many more laws that are poorly constructed
> than you get ARIN policies. I won't digress into a list (for one thing,
> I doubt there would be universal agreement on the contents of such
> a list), but, I am sure everyone already has their own thoughts on the
> subject.
>
> Owen
>
>