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<p>Hello Amy</p>
<p>Thanks for sharing you thought on the subject. That was indeed a
great and detailed text to read.</p>
<p>I understand most of what you mean and your way to see the
scenario, but sincerely I believe your experience and ability to
ethically recuse yourself on certain occasions is more an
exception rather than what would happen if other people that have
been in the same business as you would be on your shoes. Just
think for a moment how many business people with a primary role to
sell something or make sure the environment is favorable for their
main business activity is able to recuse themselves if they see
there is a minimal chance they can loose businesses and therefore
commission, money on their pocket. While I recognize that may be
always possible, I rarely see people with that ability.<br>
<br>
Important to mention that some of these individuals may have as
role not only bring business to their companies, but are paid to
spend part of business hours doing some type of work in the
different policy forums and as such they as expected to bring some
positive result to their company. That result I don't believe
will, most of the time, be primarily in the interest of the
community affected. When it is in the interest of both better, but
when there is a conflict I don't think the community will always
prevail on those situations. And as you put well, how clear will
that be for other AC members and community ?</p>
<p>Best regards<br>
Fernando<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 26/10/2023 16:11, Amy Potter wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAN2rHV-nyV8_54--EbY79yycnsR9EXSTSm4VvnZc__k_jtDc7w@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr">
<div>Hi all,</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Having spent a substantial amount of time over the past
decade thinking about how to manage this exact conflict, I
figured I weigh in. I am currently serving out the remainder
of my final year on the AC, so I really don't have a stake
here in terms of trying to get re-elected, but I think the
insights I have to offer are relevant. I was an IP address
broker from 2012-2019, and was first elected to the AC in
2015. I was neither a member nor a resource holder for the
first several years I served on the AC. I believe there is
absolutely a conflict that exists for those currently working
as an IP address broker (or any other form of financial
intermediary), and that this conflict is of a slightly
different nature than the conflicts other members of the AC
may have based on working for companies that are impacted by
ARIN policies. Previous affiliation with a broker is only a
conflict in my opinion if they continue to receive some sort
of payments based on IP address sales. Nonetheless I think
this conflict can be managed by 1) the structural safeguards
already in place, and 2) the AC member understanding the
conflict and having a plan in place to deal with it. I'll get
into the details of how this plays out below, but the TLDR of
it is that I think the safeguards in place and the current
culture of the AC provides quite a bit of protection; that a
broker behaving ethically can provide substantial relevant
insight and value to the AC under the right set of
circumstances; and that successfully managing the conflict
comes down to full transparency and recusing oneself at the
appropriate times. <br>
</div>
<br>
<div>There are a number of safeguards already built into the
system during the election process and through the AC's own
processes. Candidates running for the AC provide bios which
include a section where they are asked about conflicts. They
also provide details about prior work history. So long as
these sections are answered honestly I think this provides the
community itself with notice of potential conflicts so that
members may vote in an informed manner, or seek additional
feedback from the candidate if they have any questions. There
are also options available to ARIN and the nomcom to deal with
potentially false responses. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>As for the way the AC itself operates, at the annual face
to face meeting each January members of the AC disclose their
current employer, role, and potential conflicts to one
another. At the end of each monthly meeting, there is an
opportunity for AC members to disclose any changes in
employment or affiliation so that other AC members are able to
evaluate the things each AC member says and does in light of
their affiliations and sources of compensation. Throughout my
time on the AC, the culture of the group has taken this
obligation very seriously, and members have taken affiliations
and conflicts into account when evaluating the contributions
of others and decisions on how to vote. AC members also must
update their bios that are published on ARIN's website to
accurately reflect their employment and affiliation, in order
to provide continued transparency to the community.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>It's also important to remember the role of the AC in
facilitating the policy development process, and the actual
opportunities to advance ones own position (which do exist,
but there are limits to that). When a new policy proposal
comes in the Chair of the AC assigns shepherds to work with
the author. If a proposal is authored by a member of the AC,
that person cannot be a shepherd of the proposal. The chair
also considers who to assign each proposal to, taking into
account potential conflicts.Shepherds work with the author to
ensure ensure the proposal 1) has a clear problem statement,
2) proposes changes to the text of NRPM, and 3) falls within
the scope of ARIN policy. Once the shepherds are satisfied the
proposal meets these requirements they bring it to the AC to
vote on whether those three criteria are satisfied, and if it
passes, the proposal comes onto the docket as a draft policy.
At that point, yes, the "power of the pen" (ability to edit)
shifts from the author to the shepherds. The shepherds make
edits based on community feedback (mainly from ppml and
public policy consultations), however there is quite a bit of
discretion in language choice--often times there's quite a bit
of wordsmithing that goes on to try to ensure that the
proposed change to the language of NRPM actually achieves the
thing it's trying to achieve. Members of the AC often
collaborate with one another on this wordsmithing, and this is
where industry expertise is extremely helpful. As a broker I
provided quite a bit of feedback to my peers about language
choices based on my experience of how they would likely be
applied, what potential opportunities for loopholes this left,
etc. If a broker can fulfill this function ethically it can be
very very useful. One of the most difficult parts of being on
the AC is trying to make sure the language you're working on
actually achieves what you want it to, and there is often a
huge difference between what I actually see happen in the IP
address market and what those not involved in the market think
happens. <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>The next stages of voting are where I believe the need to
recuse oneself comes in. When the AC is voting to advance a
draft to a recommended draft, move a recommended draft to last
call, or recommend for board adoption the AC votes on whether
it is 1) technically sound, 2) fair and impartial, and 3)
supported by the community. I believe there is an opportunity
for bias to creep in in evaluating the amount of community
support that exists, so I frequently recused myself from
voting on policies in these stages while I was a broker, even
after having contributed to wordsmithing. While members of the
AC make decisions for themselves about whether or not to
recuse themselves, the culture of the AC plays a strong role
here in setting expectations of behavior. If a member of the
AC was voting in situations other members felt they should
have recused themselves in, it's likely any attempts to
influence the direction of future policies would be received
with far more scrutiny in the future by other AC members.
Since there are 15 members of the AC, it would be extremely
difficult for one member to effectively influence the course
of policy development after having lost the trust of the other
members. If a perceived conflict became too strong, there are
potential avenues for removal of an AC member as well. <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Ultimately I think the question for the community comes
down to whether you feel you can trust a candidate to manage
any conflict ethically. Personally I wouldn't fret too hard
about that given the faith I have in the constraints and
culture that exists at this time, however it may be worth
reconsidering in the future if the makeup of the AC starts to
shift. Also it's worth pointing out again that previous
affiliations or prior roles that would have created a conflict
in the past do not mean that conflict still exists today.
Based on the bios I'm guessing that might be where some of
this concern is coming from, but unless there is some form of
continued compensation still occurring I don't see it as an
issue personally, and the fact it was disclosed in the bios is
itself a level of transparency. <br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Hope that helps,<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>Amy<br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div> <br>
</div>
</div>
<br>
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at
1:18 PM Owen DeLong via ARIN-PPML <<a
href="mailto:arin-ppml@arin.net" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">arin-ppml@arin.net</a>>
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><br>
<br>
> On Oct 26, 2023, at 09:44, William Herrin <<a
href="mailto:bill@herrin.us" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">bill@herrin.us</a>>
wrote:<br>
> <br>
> On Thu, Oct 26, 2023 at 9:42 AM John Curran <<a
href="mailto:jcurran@arin.net" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">jcurran@arin.net</a>>
wrote:<br>
>>> On Oct 26, 2023, at 12:20 PM, William Herrin <<a
href="mailto:bill@herrin.us" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="moz-txt-link-freetext">bill@herrin.us</a>>
wrote:<br>
>>> It plummeted after the Board changed the AC's
role from shepherding<br>
>>> policy proposals to developing policy proposals.<br>
>> <br>
>> There is no material change in the role of the ARIN
AC in this regard –<br>
>> although I do agree that the role of the ARIN AC in
shepherding policies<br>
>> has been made clearer with subsequent updates to the
ARIN Policy<br>
>> Development Process (PDP).<br>
> <br>
> Hi John,<br>
> <br>
> That's just not accurate. I forget the name of the
process that<br>
> preceded the PDP, but the introduction of the PDP
fundamentally and<br>
> IMO destructively changed the AC's role.<br>
<br>
I think you’re referring to the Internet Resources Policy
Evaluation Process (IRPEP).<br>
<br>
However, I think you are misremembering things rather
substantially… Under the IRPEP,<br>
the AC had a relatively free hand to reject proposals in their
infancy and there was<br>
considerably less protection available to the proposal author
or the community.<br>
<br>
This carried over into the first version of the PDP, and the
AC’s escalating use of<br>
that ability was significantly reigned in in the next version
of the PDP as a result.<br>
<br>
Under the current PDP (and at least 2 previous versions), the
AC can only reject<br>
a proposal prior to making it a draft policy if it is out of
scope of the PDP or lacks<br>
a clear problem statement. Even in those cases, the AC is
required to make a good<br>
faith effort to wrork with the author(s) to resolve those
defects.<br>
<br>
Once a policy is a draft policy, it’s published and open for
community discussion.<br>
The AC cannot abandon it without a substantial majority vote
(IIRC it takes at<br>
least 8 members of the AC voting in favor of abandonment,
regardless of the<br>
number of AC members present in the meeting). The AC must
further provide<br>
a reason for such abandonment to the community.<br>
<br>
As John stated, if the community has any level of disagreement
with the AC’s<br>
actions in such a case, the petition process is quite easy to
exercise.<br>
<br>
To the best of my knowledge, only a handful of abandoned
proposals or<br>
draft policies have ever been successfully petitioned and of
those, I don’t<br>
recall a single example which went on to become policy.<br>
<br>
I know taking pot shots at the PDP and the AC is one of your
favorite<br>
hobbies, but I think you’re a bit off base on this one.<br>
<br>
Owen<br>
<br>
<br>
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