[rpd] [pdwg-appeal] SoftLanding BIS notice of intent to appeal

[Owen DeLong]

> On Jan 23, 2018, at 9:57 PM, Jackson Muthili <jacksonmuthi at gmail.com <mailto:jacksonmuthi at gmail.com>> wrote:
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Jan 24, 2018 at 12:34 AM, Owen DeLong <owen at delong.com <mailto:owen at delong.com>> wrote:
> 
> While I am sensitive to the idea of not letting one ISP consume the entire remaining free pool in one country,
> 
> 
> I am glad we share this concern.
> 
> This is where specificities of Africa come in. Let me give one example.  Whereas there are a few economies in Africa which because of their favourable political climate have stayed abreast with evolving technology and have made an effort to let the internet industry thrive and connect many citizens, there exists the majority where I can figuratively define the industry as 'young' and nearly 'virgin'. And these are very many. Governments, academic institutions and many other sectors are still in the process of digitising and getting their services online (because the enabling infrastructure was non existent in the first place). (The countries characterised by your USA president using that word which has no place in these discussions ;-o sorry could not help it).

Actually, I don’t see this as being Africa-specific. The same things have happened (admittedly to a lesser extent) in APNIC, LACNIC, and to a much lesser extent, even within ARIN.

I don’t see punishing countries with rational policies in order to protect those who prefer to abuse their citizens as a useful approach to policy in this instance.

As to things said by the man with the guinnea pig hairdo, I did everything I could to prevent him from being elected, including going so far as to vote for the worst democratic candidate I’ve ever seen. I take no responsibility whatsoever for anything that comes out of that incompetent hothead’s mouth.

If it’s nearly virgin, they can have the advantage of leapfrogging the rest of the world and building out IPv6 as greenfield.

> There are other scenarios but such are the scenarios that cannot be ignored. 

I’m not ignoring them, but I don’t believe that rewarding governments with bad policy at the expense of consumers in countries with better leadership is an effective or useful solution to the problem. IPv4 simply doesn’t scale to connecting everyone and there’s no way around that reality.

> I’m not in favor of protecting those completely late to the party.
>  
> But keeping addresses on the shelf to further subsidize those who still haven’t begun to develop infrastructure while preventing those that have infrastructure from serving real customers is absurd at this point in the process as far as I am concerned.
> 
> 
> This ideology would be fair if both the latecomers and early movers were playing on fair ground using same rules. This might be the case in USA for example, but obviously not in Africa. 

Again, we can agree to disagree here, but I don’t believe that rewarding bad leadership by punishing consumers in countries with better leadership is the solution to this problem, nor do I believe it benefits consumers in those countries, nor the internet in general.
>  
> Let’s be clear… We’re not talking about new entrants with the 24 month time limit in this policy. We’re talking about “possible future entrants that don’t yet exist and may or may not ever exist.” That’s why I call them fictitious. I’d call them vaporware, but it didn’t go so well the last time I used that term in reference to an Africa-related policy, so I’m trying to learn from past mistakes. ;-)
> 
> 
> Based on my example above I hope you see they are neither fictitious nor vapourware :-)

Actually, I think your example above proves my point.

> 
> I do applaud you, Jackson, for finally actually speaking to the issues in your last post (for the first time in this discussion). However, your opinions expressed are no more “the facts” than my opinions are. We can agree to disagree as men of good conscience often can. I don’t feel that there is a need to protect customers that have no ISP from customers that have an ISP.
> 
> 
> To make sure we fully understand each other. Customer I mostly refer to here spans from your average hospital to schools and government agencies and institutions that due to absence of infrastructure and related enabling frameworks could not get connected. Of course end users here are possibly directly or indirectly affected one way or another. 

From my perspective, all of the categories you mentioned are end users and all qualify on a roughly equal basis.

> 
> Really, what argument can be made that it is somehow fair to prevent more consumers in country A from getting access just so that we can still connect consumers in country B who don’t yet have an ISP?
> 
> 
> If country A and country B all had fair and equal competing and playing ground ab-initio, there would be no argument. And of course If the resource that country A and country B were competing for was not in severe scarcity mode, there still would be no argument.

Again, I don’t buy this argument. If country B didn’t have equal competing and playing ground ab-initio, it’s due to the leadership in that country and choices by that countries citizens and leadership in that development process. Penalizing those who made better choices to protect those that made poor choices doesn’t strike me as good policy. In fact, it strikes me as policy that encourages future bad decisions.

> 
> This is what is proposed by SL-BIS and IMHO, it’s bad policy. You may disagree with that. You may wish to argue that Nigerian consumers are less important than Congolese or Rwandan or Somalian consumers.
> 
> This of course has nothing to do with one consumer in one country being less or more important that the other.

And yet, that’s exactly what you are claiming. You are claiming that consumers in countries that made poor leadership choices and poor development choices resulting in lack of infrastructure should be protected at the expense of consumers in countries that made better choices.

>  
> I argue that all consumers are of roughly equal value
> 
> Me too.

Then grant them all equal access on a first come first served basis and I will support such a policy.
 
> and there is no more fair distribution mechanism amongst various consumers than first come first served.
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> 
> Once again, your statement above can only be right and fair if we were not in a state of severe resource scarcity. Where is the fairness if the first few that come first get served the entire resource?

Again, we can agree to disagree, but I think that is exactly when it matters most and when the alternatives become increasingly unfair.

> I can see an argument for limiting the amount of space the guy at the front of the line can get so as not to allow the first guy in line to take all to the detriment of those who joined the line at approximately the same time.
> 
> They WILL NOT join at the same time because of the circumstances I have given in example already.

Then they are too late to the party and they missed out. Regardless of the reasons, I don’t see holding back development in countries that are ready for the sake of those that are not as being good policy. You’re welcome to disagree and I have no problem with that. However, that’s a legitimate disagreement over the policy and while that disagreement remains with a significant portion of the community, any declaration of consensus cannot be defended.

> What I can’t see is telling the guy at the front of the line that he can’t get back in line in case there’s someone else who might want to join the line in front of him for the next 24 months.
> 
> 
> Extreme scarcity calls for extreme rationing to be fair to slow movers who are no less important that fast movers largely due to the fact that their speed was not their choice but rather other factors totally not within their control. Which is the state majority African economies find themselves in. It may not make sense when you are in a first world environment but if you are conscious and aware of history specific to this region, it will make it easier to see these arguments.

I disagree. For one thing, I think in 24 months, IPv4 is going to be a lot less relevant to the majority of the internet than it is today, so what this policy really achieves isn’t rationing to protect the latecomers, but rationing to keep resources that are badly needed today out of circulation until they are no longer particularly useful. Beyond that, however, I don’t think protecting latecomers is good policy, even with your description of the situation in Africa which, as I mentioned isn’t actually as unique as you’d like to believe.

Owen

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