Bill - At such an early stage of the policy process, I think it’s more productive to stay focused on whether the policy is technically sound and good. There are lots of other gateposts to pass to understand whether it would cost a fortune or blow up everything else. The community can ask staff through the shepherds to find out more of that type of information so it can be formally included if that’s what the community wants.
Hope that helps - Doug -- Douglas J. Camin ARIN Advisory Council [email protected] From: William Herrin <[email protected]> Date: Friday, July 11, 2025 at 3:27 PM To: Douglas Camin <[email protected]> Cc: arin-ppml <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [arin-ppml] ARIN-2025-4: Resource Issuance to Natural Persons -- Request for Feedback On Fri, Jul 11, 2025 at 9:42 AM Douglas Camin <[email protected]> wrote: > consider the policy exclusively on the merits and not on cost. > If it’s good policy, it should be implemented and if not, it should > be abandoned. This keeps us focused on whether policy is sound > or not. A sound policy can be expensive, and an unsound one can be cheap. Hi Doug, Respectfully, good policy should not make ARIN a spendthrift. Good policy is cost-effective. That may not mean cheap, but it does mean cheaper than the reasonable alternatives. If, for example, the effect of this policy can be achieved by asking individuals to implement sole proprietorships and the cost of doing so is distinctly less than the cost of the proposed policy then the proposed policy would not be a good policy. Xavier - Speaking with my personal hat on, I don't know what a reasonable cost estimate would be. From the staff analysis, I gather that there are two types of cost here: direct and indirect. As far as I can figure, direct costs involve figuring out how to verify individual identities in every country where ARIN has registrants, figuring out what legal obligations exist for transacting with individuals vs. businesses in all ARIN-region countries, including taxes and privacy protections, etc. And then of course implementing procedures and training ARIN staff to do them. Indirect costs include legal risk where one of the governments decides ARIN isn't following its obligations to individuals and organizational risk where in some jurisdictions ARIN can't fulfil its other obligations due to a legal issue arising from individual registration. For example, suppose one of the localities where ARIN operates has privacy guarantees for individuals which prohibit ARIN from publishing those registrants' identities? HIPAA doesn't apply, but there are a bunch of countries here and even if they don't have a law today they could have one tomorrow. Business to business transactions, on the other hand, almost never have privacy guarantees except what's negotiated in the contract. Given the words ARIN staff used in the analysis, I would be surprised if the attributable cost of this policy was under $100k. By contrast, none of the policy's proponents have identified an ARIN-region jurisdiction in which the current solution, asking individuals to implement sole proprietorships, would be difficult or unduly expensive. It's not that ARIN won't grant IP addresses to individuals today, right? It's just that they have to jump through the extra hoop of declaring themselves a sole proprietorship and, in some cases, filing forms with the state government to that effect. Regards, Bill Herrin -- William Herrin [email protected] https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fbill.herrin.us%2F&data=05%7C02%7C%7C3093b9458d6a464b0df908ddc0b0e707%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638878588200124523%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&sdata=lvjJiD4QmQdKT%2BHV0BI8Z2NKnvkxyH6YjRj%2BDxhER9Q%3D&reserved=0<https://bill.herrin.us/>
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