Hi Jas,

Jas wrote on 9/15/2006:

>well.. fees and EC members.. Isn't that the most
>important? and should be the most fair? Setting aside
>cultural differences of the term "fair".
>
>So when the votes are distributed as they are now -
>the final result is not going to be one of the
>community/membership, but a result of the largest
>network operators.

I haven't been following this for five years, but from what I have seen over the last couple of years, the problem(?) has been getting consensus both at the Policy SIG meeting as well as on the mailing list.

An example of this was the proposal a couple of meetings back for abolishing per IPv6 address fee for NIRs. Only a couple of people spoke up on the mailing list objecting, but that was enough to stop the proposal in its tracks, which had reached consensus at the AMM.

I think this was a good example of every participant's voice being heard. All of the NIRs were obviously in favour (with all their massive voting power if it ever had to go to a formal vote), but it took just a couple of members to object, and that was the end of it.

So it depends on which side of the fence you sit as to whether this process is the problem, or whether it is actually an enabler for everyone to be able to have real input.

>From my experience, I have yet to see (not implying it hasn't happened) the EC not endorse a policy that has reached consensus, so I don't really think that this is a concern.

The current fee structure is very complicated, and everybody has their own vested interests in it, regardless of what they say in public-that is human nature. I believe that the revised fee structure was meant to be simpler - I couldn't answer that because I was bamboozled by it after a couple of paragraphs and gave up reading.

I don't know what the answer is, maybe to just let sleeping dogs lie?:)

Cheers,
Tim.