AOP Notification

[Dave McClure]

Scott, please allow me to respond to your e-mail to Steve May.  While Steve serves (and very well) on the AOP Board of Directors, I am responsible for communication to our members, and I authored the alert to our members.

We are faced with a situation in which a small number of self-appointed Internauts -- most of whom do not appear to be major ISPs, and who represent only an insignificant percentage of the people involved in public Internet Services -- are attempting to force a proposal which would hijack and hand absolute control of North American IP addresses to an unknown, intractable organization which will has no authority to begin with, will have no responsibility to the Internet industry and will not be monitored by anyone.

And this is okay with you?

While I deeply respect the knowledge represented on this listserv, I'd point out that no one here appears to have experience in management, or in the formation or operation of a real non-profit.

As someone who does have such experience, I have to say that the current proposal will certainly face class-action lawsuits from those who actually have to foot the bill for this organization.  Not to mention the anti-trust implications.

This is a deeply flawed proposal that **must** have significant public discussion.  And it must have the consensus of the industry, not one relatively hidden listserv run by Network Solutions.

It's interesting to note that you, like many other critics of our alert, did not respond to the issues we raised but rather attacked the messenger.  Please take a moment to actually read what we wrote, which responded directly to the posted ARIN proposal.

If that's a disservice to our members, I truly hope we continue disserving them for many, many years to come.  As for it being a "scare tactic", perhaps the fact that this proposal doesn't scare you is because you won't have to foot the bill for it.

On another note, please see the section on membership in ARIN.  In the future, under this proposal you seem to feel is so peachy-keen, unless you have forked over $1,000 you are welcome to sit down and shut up -- you have no voice in ARIN.

We'll keep informing our members when such proposals arise.  That's our job.

Respectfully,
David P. McClure
Executive Director
Association of Online Professionals


----------
> From: Scott Bradner <sob at newdev.harvard.edu>
> To: the_innkeeper at sols.net
> Subject: arin
> Date: Saturday, February 01, 1997 5:28 PM
> 
> 
> > I will not apologize if that made a few folks irritated
> 
> by spreading falsehoods & using scare tactics?
> 
> I think you did a diservice to your organization
> discussions based on the facts of the proposal would have 
> been more useful
> 
> Scott