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[rpd] Updated Proposal - AfriNIC Policy Compliance Dashboard AFPUB-2026-GEN-002-DRAFT02

Nonjabulo Sphilile nonjabulosphilile at gmail.com
Thu Oct 8 14:15:58 UTC 2026


Good day,

I want to support the point Mendie makes, because it is the one the replies
keep stepping around.

"No intrusion in the members' networks" answers a question about method,
not about authority. The proposal can promise that nothing enters a network
and still leave open what authority it is exercising over resource use.
What a holder needs to know is not how a check is performed, but what power
is being asserted when a "possible" finding is recorded, sent to staff,
kept as history and attached to a ladder that runs to publication, NS
removal, recovery, record deletion and membership closure. If the authority
is not shown, the method does not matter.

"The right … because of the RSA, nothing new" is the same assertion, one
step further back. The Assisted Review page cites RSA clauses 2 and
4(b)(ii), and what those describe is a review of registry data — the
member's own name, address and contacts in MyAFRINIC and WHOIS — on
information supplied to the registry; the same text leaves investigation to
"the appropriate and competent authority(ies)". That is register-keeping,
not a power to audit how a holder deploys or uses the resources it holds.
Repeating that the RSA already grants it does not identify the provision
that does, and a contract between a registry and its own counterparty is
not something the community should be asked to endorse, restate or extend
through policy.

And that is where I part company with the premise of this process. A policy
is not a law. It is an internal agreement among willing participants, and
it becomes authority only if it can compel compliance regardless of consent
— which a voluntary registry cannot do; its strongest act is to stop
coordinating. Enforcing it belongs to courts, regulators and governments,
not to a working group. The circle that drafts and approves these texts is
a small, self-selected group of participants: a mailing-list majority is
not a legislature, and a service region is not a sovereign people. I do not
accept that a vote in that room creates authority over operators across a
continent, and I do not accept this proposal as a source of it.

That is not a refusal of rules. Rules that carry consequences are made by
those who can legitimately make them, and holders do comply with what they
have actually agreed to.

So, concretely, before this goes further: identify the exact instrument and
clause said to grant a resource-use audit power, state the grounds on which
it may be initiated and the limits on what information or access may be
required, and write into the text that this proposal neither creates nor
endorses any audit or enforcement power that is not expressly granted.
Where an express grant is absent, the answer is no.

Regards,
Nonjabulo
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