[arin-ppml] IP Address Policy

[William Herrin]

On Thu, Aug 9, 2012 at 9:50 AM, McTim <dogwallah at gmail.com> wrote:
>> and the community does not have any real legal vote
>
> correct, policy decisions are reached by consensus, not by vote of members.

Policy decisions are reached by a vote of of representatives elected
by a vote of the members who are almost exclusively service providers
of non-trivial size. Their biases tend to reflect the biases of the
folks who elected them. They endeavor to include and respect views
from the community at large and consider such inclusion a major goal.
Sometimes they do a better job than others.

Like the U.S. First Amendment, this behavior is self-preservative. If
I'm forced to respect the practice of your religion then you are
forced to respect the practice of mine. Ditto the way you and I
differently choose to use IP addresses. Unlike the First Amendment,
ARIN's consent-based rule-making is not codified in hard requirements.

Regrettably, our makers of decisions only choose to act with something
reasonably resembling consensus somewhere between 25% and 50% of the
time. The rest of the time it's a majority vote by the member
representatives, whatever ideology we may proclaim.

Regards,
Bill Herrin


-- 
William D. Herrin ................ herrin at dirtside.com  bill at herrin.us
3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/>
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