Classes of membership

[Jay Vassos-Libove]

On Tue, 21 Jan 1997, Randy Bush wrote:

> What classes of membership would you suggest, and what would their different
> rights and privileges be?

The very question begs my point -- I don't want "large" members to have
more "rights" than "small" members.  However, I acknowledge that many
people and industries have interest in the Internet, and that any
organization such as ARIN could easily be overwhelmed by everyone
(literally) being a "member".

The only "classes" that I had in mind, and I don't like the idea really,
were in terms of cost.  Frequently, the same level of service is granted
to different sized organizations based on their ability to pay... but that
is unfair.

The most important concept, to me, about the operation of bodies which
manage the Internet is that everyone be heard equally, and that presence,
size, and money do not give greater access to the forum of ideas and
decision making.

Perhaps my concerns are best answered by having all, or perhaps only
final, discussion open to all interested parties - not just high paying
"members", and allowing the net at large to vote on final proposals.  A
compromise, if this is too much to swallow for the paying members, or if
this would result in so few paying members as to prohibit reasonable
operation of ARIN, would be to have initial proposal formulation be in the
hands of the paying members, but to still allow the net at large enough of
a voice to override any wildly unpopular proposals created by the paying
members?

Beyond that, I'm afraid that I don't have any magic bullets to this very
very difficult question.

-Jay