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Hi Had a few comments based on today’s
presentation, during the Policy SIG meeting. From what I understood making
information about policy more easily and readily available does not need a
policy change . It just needs to have existing information more readily and
easily available . Secondly, as shared by many people
who commented, the four week input period is normally sufficient for most PDPs,
therefore it does not need any change . Policy timelines are not set for exceptional
situations, but for general situations. If a policy discussion takes more that
4 weeks , as clarified, the chairs can already extend it. Therefore, no changes
need to be paid in the policy discussion timeline. However, perhaps the community may
want to work on setting up a mechanism for reviewing policies that have been
implemented. Regards Amrita I took the liberty of
reformatting the message into a consistent font and size.
On Sep 9, 2019, at 02:41 ,
JORDI PALET MARTINEZ <jordi.palet@consulintel.es>
wrote: Hi Owen, El 27/8/19 8:15, "Owen
DeLong" <owen@delong.com>
escribió:
While there is no appeal
process, there are sufficient iterations of approval and ratification in the
current process that I am not convinced an appeal process is necessary. I don’t agree on that. If
today chairs decide that something is out-of-scope, nobody has a way to change
that decision. There is no way the community will be able to discuss the policy
proposal as a “policy proposal”, because the chairs don’t accept it. Is there any history of the
chairs determining that something was out of scope erroneously? To the best of
my knowledge, this is not the case in the APNIC region. In the case of ARIN, there is
a kind of appeal process with is the “petition process”. Here we don’t have
that. And is the only region where we don’t have that. Yes, and not once has that
appeal process successfully changed an AC out of scope ruling. As you are
aware, the board upheld the AC decision and you, yourself eventually realized
that your original proposal as written was, in fact, out of scope. I really think is very bad
not having it. I remain unconvinced of its
necessity. The ARIN process is different… It has appeals built in at every step
of the PDP. ARIN operates in the US which is an inherently litigious
environment and the appeals serve (IMHO) as a safety valve to avoid litigation.
I’m convinced the chairs
always act on their best good faith and willingness, but this scheme, without a
way for the community to oversee the chair’s decision is “per se” against the
bottom-up approach. Again, I disagree. If you
enough of the community feels that the chairs erred in determining a proposal
out of scope, I have no doubt that the community is capable of communicating
this to the chairs and asking them to reconsider their decision. Further, I
think the chairs would do so in good faith under that circumstance. Just imagine if we have a set
of chairs that aren’t really acting in good faith, but on personal interest
(please understand is just an example, not saying at all it is the present
case). I don’t think we even have a way to remove them. I think this is unlikely in
the APNIC region, and, if it were to happen, proposals being declared out of
scope becomes the least or our concerns, frankly. IIRC, there is a process for
replacing the co-chairs which seems to me to be the better solution to this
particular problem. If there is not and you wish to propose such a process, I
might be more inclined to support something like that.
Calling out the (remote)
possibility that some jurisdiction might have a problem with it is a red
herring and absent actual legal doctrine within the APNIC service region,
I think it’s a bit far fetched to put that argument forward. Agree, but we need to
understand that for sure there is a jurisdiction. And in my knowledge (not
being a lawyer), any process that doesn’t have an implicit appeal process has
lot of chances to be defeated in *any* jurisdiction. It is much better to avoid
that, right ? I do not believe you are
correct about that. Again, I am not convinced that that law exists in any
jurisdiction within the APNIC region either as written law or as case law or
precedent. Unless and until you can provide such an example, I think your
argument here is quite hollow. Please don’t confuse what I
said above about the US and litigation as an example here. I believe that the
ARIN appeal process serves as a low-cost way for those that disagree with the
AC to present their argument without it having to go to litigation. I do not
see a likelihood of an APNIC policy co-chair decision going to litigation.
That’s fine, but you brought
up “now even more relevant”, so I figured I’d point out that your example of
“more relevant” is not as relevant as you seem to imply. Paul and/or the EC and I’m
certain you will get an appropriate response. While
it’s not a formal appeal process, I’m certain that if they agree with you that
the co-chairs erred, they will discuss the situation with the co-chairs and
come to an appropriate resolution. Agree, and I talked to Paul
about it. If I recall correctly, he only suggested to go to the open forum, not
him, not the EC. However, we don’t have time allocated for it. In which case, posting your
grievance to the list and listening to what the community has to say about it
seems like a perfectly reasonable approach. And furthermore, I don’t
think it is savvy if this happens, that we must wait 6 months for discussing it
in a meeting. We can agree to disagree. If you read the PDP, there is
no definition of the scope and there is a contradiction in the text (https://www.apnic.net/about-apnic/corporate-documents/documents/policy-development/development-process/),
as it says: “Policy proposals are proposals which have been officially submitted for
the consideration of the APNIC community …” and then “A formal proposal
paper must be submitted to the SIG mailing list and to the SIG Chair”, while
the *actual process* is sending to the chairs, so they decide if is being sent
to the list or not! Actually, as I understand the
process (and as I have used it in the past), you are welcome to send your
proposal either to the chairs (who will post it to the list if they believe it
is within scope) or to the chairs and the list. In fact, you are free to post
ideas about proposals and get feedback on the development of the proposal prior
to submission on the list as well. Should anyone ignore the
actual process and just send the proposals to the list? I don’t think that
constitutes ignoring the process. I think that is within the list charter and
is not an abuse of the list, so why not? Where is it written that the
actual process precludes you from sending your proposal to the list prior to it
being accepted by the co-chairs?
I disagree. You, yourself (in
text you removed from the quoted text) advocated making APNIC process more like
RIPE because you think the RIPE process gets better participation and other
favorable comments you’ve made about the RIPE process in the past. No matter what you do, there
will always be some possible different interpretations of existing text. This
happens even with professional lawmakers and lawyers writing it. There is no such thing as an
unambiguous human language. Owen |