[address-policy-wg] 2013-03 New Draft Document and Impact Analysis Published (No Need - Post-Depletion Reality Adjustment and Clean up)

* David Farmer

> On 8/4/13 09:48 , Tore Anderson wrote:
>> * David Farmer
>> 
>>> I believe the primary definition of fairness the RIR communities
>>> have been using is, "only those that have *verified operational
>>> need* get Internet number resources".
>> 
>> Do you have a link or reference? (Tried Google, no hits.)
> 
> Try goal #1 in section #1 of RFC 2050. See
> https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc2050#section-1

Written in a time of abundance long ago, where the fairness of the RIRs'
"all you can eat buffet" worked as there was enough for everyone.
That's not the world we live in today, and besides the document is about
to be superseded by the 2050-bis:

> And in slightly different words, try goal #1 in section #2 of RFC
> 2050-bis. See
> http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-housley-rfc2050bis-02#section-2

...which happens to contain exactly 0 occurrences of the string "fair".

>> Let me get this straight, are you saying here that our current goal
>> of fairness in our current state of scarcity is to protect the
>> *feelings* of the LIRs who return home from the second-hand market
>> empty-handed? (Currently 96-97% of them.)
> 
> You always have to look at fairness from the perspective of those
> who don't get what they want. Fairness isn't usually an issue raised
> by those that get what they want.

Yes, I'm sure that the LIRs that didn't get the resources they wanted
(and "needed") feel it's a great consolation to know that their
competitors with deeper pockets also "needed" the resources in order to
absorb the customer growth they now are unable to take on themselves.

Or how starving folks around the globe surely must feel that their
situation is "fair", as Tore and David managed to finish all the food on
their dinner plates today. (We "needed" it, after all.)

Sorry. I just don't at all buy the argument that the unprivileged are
treated "fair" just because the privileged happened to "need". Everyone
"needs", yet not everyone gets. The way I see it, the scarcity situation
is going to result in unfairness no matter what and there's nothing our
current policy nor 2013-03 can do about it.

> Personally, I'm not fundamentally opposed to operational need going 
> away, especially the current overly bureaucratic way it is
> determined, if you can find something that replaces it that provides
> some sense of fairness that you seem to agree is necessary.

Personally I don't think it is at all necessary to keep the
philosophical "fairness" goal in the policy, as we have no working
mechanism in the policy that actually ensure any form of fair
distribution in this time of scarcity. That's my pragmatic view.

However there were a couple of other WG participants who felt that it
should be left in there for high-level philosophical and political
reasons, and to ensure the door is kept open for a potential future
discussion of "what is fair nowadays and how do we go about enforcing it
exactly"? I have no problem with that per se, hence my offer to leave it
in there.

Tore