[arin-ppml] Can a personal property approach ever transition into multi-stakeholder, private sector led, bottom-up policy development model?

[John Curran]

On Apr 28, 2011, at 2:31 PM, David Conrad wrote:
> The reality (at least as I see it) is that at least some legacy holders believe (if they consider the question at all) that the IP addresses in their inventory are their asset to do with as they please.

Let's explore that statement a little further to see if we can get
some clarity on underlying issues...

1) It's the position of many stakeholders that we should operate
   in a model of multi-stakeholder, private sector led, bottom-up 
   policy development model of technical coordination for these
   identifies that acts for the benefit of global Internet users.

2) Such policy development model should not only allow open 
   participation, but ideally should be based on the voluntary
   contractual agreement of participants for purposes of 
   implementation of the developed policies.  This also means
   that no governmental or regulatory mandates are necessary
   for the system to operate effectively.
  
3) Presume an hypothetical organization (JKL) that does this for 
   all IP address holders globally, and also provides for big
   picture overall policy goals like periodic recompetition,
   integrity protections, transparency, accountability, etc.
   
Once that's all up and running just fine, how do the existing 
legacy address holders transition into the system?  It is clear
that has to happen if you want to be able to evolve and set 
effective policies systemwide, but how does such a transition
for those outside the system occur?

A government mandate or ruling to that effect is suboptimal, since 
that's contrary to the principles that we are building something 
that doesn't require such to operate.  Yet, in the absence of such
forms of governmental involvement, there is unlikely to be any 
benefit for parties working outside the system to ever participate,
as they already have all the benefits of the system without any
of encumbrances.  A few might, but there will be many that see 
no reason to do so.

Can we actually have *any* multi-stakeholder, private sector led, 
bottom-up policy development system for technical coordination 
of identifiers at the same time as we have parties presently that: 
1) have no existing contractual requirements to participate in the 
system, but 2) presently hold number resources in their belief as
personal property?

How would such a transition ever occur? Do you deprive those outside 
the system of the benefits to encourage participation, or does the 
community decide that the presence of parties without contracts yet 
with resources means that they should operate eternally outside the
system?  Or do they compromise on the "government mandate" approach 
and obtain one, despite the departure from the very framework that
has been established?  

These are some of the underlying questions to the situation that 
we're presently facing, and appears quite possible that parties 
"who feel IP addresses are their asset to do with as they please" 
are inherently incompatible with the goals that we've set for 
private sector led, bottom-up policy development.

/John

John Curran
President and CEO
ARIN