[arin-ppml] Against 2013-4

[Owen DeLong]

On Jun 3, 2013, at 9:51 AM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

> 
> 
>> -----Original Message-----
> 
>> Quite recently, we have seen repeated demonstrations of strong support for
>> needs basis from the community.
> 
> We have? Do you mean two ARIN people, Bill and Chris, speaking out at a RIPE meeting? 

No… I mean the community response every time the elimination of needs basis has been discussed at an ARIN meeting and/or on PPML.

> I would not deny that there is a small core of people in North America who are religiously devoted to the idea of needs assessments. Maybe we are talking about a dozen people at most.

It seems to be quite a bit more than that, actually.

> But the consensus within the RIPE APWG is pretty clearly in favor of the no need proposal, and the topic is highly controversial even within the ARIN region.  

The proposal we are discussing is in the ARIN region. I will point out that APNIC experimented with dropping needs basis for a while. They seem to have reversed that decision.

As to the RIPE proposal 2013-03, it is in status "Awaiting decision from proposer, Awaiting documentation" and has not even entered the comment and review phase according to the RIPE NCC Policy Porposal page here:
https://www.ripe.net/ripe/policies/current-proposals/current-policy-proposals

So I'm not sure how you can claim that it has achieved consensus in RIPE.

It only remains controversial in the ARIN region because a small, but vocal minority keep trying to eliminate responsible address policy, most of them so that they can try to make money speculating on the price of IPv4 addresses.

>> Needs basis and documented justified need have been required since the
>> days when Jon Postel tracked IP address assignments in a notebook, so I am
>> not sure how you can claim that this concept was developed in the final
>> death throes of IPv4.
> 
> No, I challenge this on a factual basis. The main legacy holders from the mid-1980s - MIT, GE, the military, etc. - were not subject to needs assessments as we use that term today. 

The nature of needs assessment has changed, but the fundamental principle has not.

> If they were, you have to explain how MIT and a few others have ended up giving back large chunks, effectively admitting that they did not need them? If they did not need them, how did they get them? This is probably not a very fruitful argument in that it is not forward-looking, but I do want to make it clear that claims that "we have always done it this way" are just false. 

1.	Their needs changed over time.
2.	The evaluation and specificity of need has changed over time.

I did not say we have always done it exactly the way we do it now. I said the principle of needs basis has always applied.

You are arguing for the elimination of the principle of needs basis, in part on the claim that it didn't used to apply. I am debunking your claim. The principle has always been there with the exception of a brief hiatus in the APNIC region.

> 
>> I'm well aware of your desire to move to a world where IP number resources
>> management is as dysfunctional as radio spectrum management is today.
>> (One need look no further than the history of the 220Mhz band for an
>> example of this dysfunction).
> 
> Owen, having studied radio allocation since 1981 and having served at the FCC as an intern in the 80s, I know a thing or two about how radio spectrum allocation worked prior to auctions. And if you consider that world of beauty contests, political pull and allocations narrowly and wastefully dedicated to specific services to be a paragon of efficiency and fairness, I have some reports for you to read. 

The mere fact that the FCC's prior system may have been worse than their present system does not make the present system superior to what we are currently using with respect to IP addresses.

Owen

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