[arin-ppml] Conflict of Interest rules ?

[Ronald F. Guilmette]

Greetings all,

I hope that no one will take this the Wrong Way.  I really do not
have any intention of even remotely suggesting any untwoward behavior
on the part of anyone associated in any way with ARIN, but I would
like to ask a question here which I have already have asked also on
some of the other RIR policy mailing lists, and which it is my intention
to ask all five of the Regional Internet Registries.

Quite simply, the last dozen years or so have seen a dramatic rise
in value, basically from zero to some very large numbers, for salable
IPv4 address blocks.  This rapid and steep rise in value has created
some incentives for people that, a dozen years ago, didn't even exist.

Quite obviously, staff members of the various RIRs are in a rather unique
position to profit from these recent rises in the value of IPv4 addresses
over the past few years, if they elected to do so.

For this reason, I wish to ask the following simple question:

Does ARIN have any sort of conflict of interest or other sorts of
ethical rules which would prohibit ARIN staff members from actively
participating, either directly or indirectly, in the current open
market for IPv4 address space?

I've attempted already to answer this question for myself.  I did some
googling around, and I did find that there appear to be clear rules
governing possible conflicts of interest in the case of ARIN board
members, but I was unable to find any similar sorts of policies that
might apply to ARIN staff members.  So I want to ask:  Are there any
such?

I wish to stress again that no one should make any inferences at all,
based on my question, and that it is my intention to put this same
question to all five of the Regional Internet Registries.


Regards,
rfg