[arin-ppml] AC candidates

[William Herrin]

On Mon, Aug 12, 2024 at 12:41 PM Cj Aronson <cja at daydream.com> wrote:
> My question for you is what's the real issue you're trying to solve?

Howdy!

There are three things that concern me.

1. Policy-related activity from people other than the AC seems a lot
more sparse now than in the IRPEP days. I've felt it myself. There was
a typo correction a couple months back. In the IRPEP days I'd have
written a proposal and followed it through. Under the PDP I said,
here's a typo, have at it. Why would I bother writing it when the AC
will rewrite it anyway?

To be blunt: ARIN had a far stronger claim to being a bottom-up
community driven operation under the 2008 IRPEP than it does under the
2024 PDP. The character of 2024 participation, well, it's more like
FCC participation which isn't bottom-up at all.

2. Death by committee. Clever or provocative proposals never really
get a fair shake before the community at large because each AC member
tinkers with it a little bit to "improve" it, making it more broadly
palatable. Which tends to be more like the comfortable, known policy
the proposal was written to change from. Carefully reshaped to fit in
the box.

3. Poor writing. ARIN staff have to interpret policy text
permissively, lest they be accused of making up rules which are
arbitrary, capricious and hence unlawful. Too many times I've seen
proposals with ambiguously written requirements defended with
statements to the effect that ARIN staff will interpret them in a
subjectively reasonable way. Which they are not allowed to do because
such behavior is inherently capricious.

When the authors were in control of the text, it was the AC shepherd's
job to stand up and say: Hey, you have some ambiguity to fix here.
What do you really want this to mean? What do you want to happen under
this policy if a registrant comes along and does X? Now that the AC
writes the text and advocates for the proposal, no one's really doing
that job. After all, if you didn't already know it was technically
sound, you wouldn't have written it that way. You see the mental trap,
right? When it's really bad you get some pushback from staff and
legal, but for the stuff that's just moderately bad it doesn't get
fixed until sure enough, someone out there finds the loophole and
makes an address grab.


Regards,
Bill Herrin

--
William Herrin
bill at herrin.us
https://bill.herrin.us/