Indeed - you only emphasize why it is important for organizations to get involved in ARIN’s governance… It is not intended that your sole interaction with ARIN be via contractual mechanisms, but rather that network operators
actually participate as members of the organization.
Perhaps the only bright spot in the recent change to the fee structure is that I now have membership open to me without having to pay an extra $500/year for the privilege.
Prior to this most recent change, end-users were not afforded such participation.
Correct.
Even with the most recent change, the board still opted to default all end users to second class citizenry unless they each took specific actions to opt in to participation in ARIN governance.
Correct as well - with the understanding that the “specific action” that one needs to take is simply asking to be a General Member; i.e. confirming your organization’s intent to vote in ARIN elections and acknowledging that your organization will be publicly
listed on the General Member list. <
https://www.arin.net/participate/oversight/membership/faq/>
Having a record of such acknowledgement is desirable for record keeping purposes, and yes, in theory we could have forced the entire 7000+ existing ARIN general members on day one of the membership structure change to undertake the exact same consent process
in order to retain their General Member status and be able to vote – but that would have been significant member disenfranchisement for something that ARIN can just as easily obtain for pre-existing general members on a rolling basis going forward.
My apologies if the handling of this leaves with the impression of being “a second class” citizen, as that was not intent at all (rather we are just handling a very significant change in our membership structure in the most pragmatic manner possible.)