[address-policy-wg] 2023-04 (Add AGGREGATED-BY-LIR status for IPv4 PA assignments)

Hi Leo, Colleagues

I am both saddened and yet not surprised by this announcement to move
this proposal to the review phase. It doesn't seem to matter what
anyone says, I suspect this proposal will be approved. You included a
link to the Policy Development Process (ripe-781). Pity you have not
followed it. Now suggesting we follow a process, Jim Reid will argue I
am trying to turn RIPE into some "process heavy organisation". But the
PDP is a policy. So do we get to pick and choose which bits of which
policies we apply or ignore? If that is the case why not just dump all
policy and work to a general understanding. It might be more honest.

Let's walk through the PDP as defined in ripe-781. Starting with '2.
The Process'.

"These phases are detailed below with proposed timelines for the
various stages. These may differ for individual proposals, but the
actual timelines must be documented."

In the opening email Angela stated that the four week Discussion Phase
will run until 3 October 2023.

"At the end of each phase of the process, one of the chairs of the
relevant WG will summarise the state of discussion on the WG mailing
list."

This has not been done.

"In all phases of the RIPE PDP, suggestions for changes to the
proposal and objections regarding the proposal must be justified with
supporting arguments and then addressed adequately by the proposer or
by any supporter of the proposal."

I have objected to this proposal on several grounds. I have justified
my objections with significant supporting arguments. A number of
people have supported the principle of my objections. Some people who
initially gave the proposal a "+1" response have since withdrawn that
support based on my objections. Neither the proposers, nor their
supporters (the +1 brigade), have addressed my objections. Even worse
than that, the proposers still deny that this proposal changes
anything substantially with regard to address policy. They still claim
it does not allow anything to be done that cannot already be done. I
have adequately shown this argument to be false. Neither the proposers
nor their supporters have even acknowledged this fact. A number of
people have agreed that such a fundamental change to address policy
should not be introduced as a (hidden) side effect of another,
apparently inconsequential, change. If such a change is to be
introduced, which may or may not have merits of its own, it should be
openly discussed as a separate topic. Given that these objections are
highly significant, and that they have been completely ignored by the
proposers and supporters and not "addressed adequately", the chairs of
the AP-WG cannot declare an initial consensus and move this proposal
to the review phase.

In '2.2 Discussion Phase' it says:

"If the proposer decides to take the proposal to the next phase, they
need to produce a draft RIPE Document which should be published within
four weeks after the end of the Discussion Phase, before the proposal
can be moved to the Review Phase."

This has not been done.

"The RIPE NCC will need to publish an impact analysis for the proposal
'before' it can be moved to the Review Phase."

This has not been done.

I am raising these issues today as it is the last day of the
discussion phase according to the diagram in Appendix A of ripe-781.
Even though the diagram does not agree with the text in ripe-781. I
have allowed the 5 weeks after the discussion phase shown in the
diagram, rather than the 4 weeks stated in the text.

This proposal cannot be moved to the review phase under the current
circumstances, if we are actually following the PDP policy.

Let me summarise my objections. The proposer claims this is an
inconsequential change to address policy that does not permit anything
to be done that cannot already be done. That has been proven to be a
false claim. This is a major change to address policy that will
undermine the whole concept of the public registry that we have
understood for the last 30 years. Regardless of the merits of such a
major change, we cannot allow such a change based on a few "+1"
comments from a handful of the small group of people who dominate and
control all policy decisions in this region. AFAIK neither the
proposer, nor the RIPE NCC, nor the proposal supporters have made any
attempt to reach out to other stakeholder groups who use the RIPE
Database to inform them of this discussion, advise them of the
potential consequences and invite them to join this discussion.
Stakeholder groups like LEAs, government regulators, private
investigators, abuse management organisations, security community,
researchers, and others (who the Database Task Force never
identified).

cheers
denis

On Fri, 27 Oct 2023 at 03:51, Leo Vegoda <leo at vegoda.org> wrote:
>
> Dear WG,
>
> The Discussion Phase of policy proposal 2023-04 "Add AGGREGATED-BY-LIR
> status for IPv4 PA assignments" has now ended. Many thanks to all for
> your comments.
>
> The proposal will now move forward to the Review Phase.
>
> The RIPE NCC will prepare an impact analysis and a draft RIPE Document.
>
> More details about the phases of the Policy Development Process are
> published here: https://www.ripe.net/publications/docs/ripe-781
>
> You'll also see an announcement from the RIPE NCC soon.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Leo Vegoda for the co-chairs
>
> --
>
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