[rpd] Report on the Policy Proposal “AFPUB-2016-V4-001-DRAFT07" (IPv4 Soft Landing BIS).

[Owen DeLong]

Dear co-chairs, board, and RPD list,

Please consider this my formal objection to the erroneous conclusion of last call by the co-chairs and engagement per the PDP requesting that they reverse this decision. If I don’t see evidence that the decision is to be reversed by the co-chairs within 48 hours, I will begin the formal appeal process as documented in the PDP.

This report is nothing short of a work of fiction.

Beginning with the first sentence “In line with the Policy Development Process”, since there is no way a policy with the number of sustained and unaddressed objections present with this policy can be even remotely considered to have achieved rough consensus.

Previous objections clarified that the declaration of consensus in Lagos was in error and that error is now compounded by this action.

It’s unclear to me where the appeal of the original decision stands, but there was clearly engagement and clear statements on the list that an appeal was desired.

The co-chairs belief that the current version of the proposal addresses notes and observations made is absurd. Multiple objections remain which have not been addressed by this version and those objections were voiced again during the last call period with clarification that they were not, in fact, addressed.

The claim that there were “identical petition letters” rallied by “a community member” is utterly false. There were letters from multiple parties, some of which were posted by a single community member to the list on behalf of other community members who are not subscribed to the list and chose not to post directly. There is no basis for discounting or ignoring input from these community members. Further, the letters were not actually identical. Several of them were modified by the individuals prior to signing, including at least one which was written and submitted directly to the list by me (Owen DeLong).

The claim that the objections to the co-chairs’ last call decision was from a single member of the community and “those he rallied” is also patently false. Andrew did not rally me into objecting to this last call decision, I got there quite on my own. Further, just because one or more members of the community encouraged others to join them in objecting to a proposal does not mean that those voiced should not be heard or count any less than any other voice. After all, there is no way I could convince someone to join me in objecting to a proposal that they were in favor of passing.

“Everyone had however had several weeks of opportunity to comment when the revised version of the proposal was put out by the authors in response to community feedback” [sic]

This sentence ignores the fact that there were multiple objections raised during those weeks and that many of the earlier objections to this proposal remained unaddressed by the changes in this version. Further, one objector stated that he was no longer opposed to one particular section due to this last round of revisions, but did not remove his general objection to the proposal overall and did not state support for the proposal in general.

The claim that there was only one objection that highlighted specific issues with the policy proposal also doesn’t match the record.

I urge the co-chairs to review the record of this proposal and the various posts about the problems with this policy proposal and reconsider their decision in light of these facts.

Absent such an action by the co-chairs within the next 48 hours, I will be joining the other people who have already commented in calling for an appeal of this decision.

Should the board choose to take action on this policy proposal prior to the conclusion of the existing appeal and/or the appeal that is likely to result from this step, I urge them to take the action of remanding the policy back to the PDWG on the basis that the PDP was not followed and the declarations of consensus both at Lagos and at the conclusion of last call were in error and the record clearly shows a pattern which does not constitute rough consensus.

These actions are not only placing AfriNIC at risk, but are jeopardizing the credibility of the entire multi-stakeholder bottom-up consensus driven process on a global scale. This error must be stopped before it is allowed to go any further for the sake of the entire internet community.

There are other nits I could pick with this report, (e.g. the questionable staff opinion), but I will leave those out for brevity here.

Respectfully submitted,

Owen DeLong
Concerned community member
owen at delong.com
27 December, 2017

> On Dec 26, 2017, at 11:36 , Sami Salih <sami at ntc.gov.sd> wrote:
> 
> 
> Dear AFRINIC Board,
> 
> Please find the attached report on the Policy Proposal Report on the Policy Proposal “AFPUB-2016-V4-001-DRAFT07"(IPv4 Soft Landing BIS).
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Sami Salih, Dewole Ajao
> PDWG Co-Chairs
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Dr. Sami Salih  | Assistant Professor
> Sudan University of Science and Technology
> Eastern Dum, P.O Box 11111-407
> email: sami.salih at sustech.edu
> Mob: +249122045707 
> 
> <IPv4 Soft Landing BIS-Report.pdf>_______________________________________________
> RPD mailing list
> RPD at afrinic.net
> https://lists.afrinic.net/mailman/listinfo/rpd