On Jan 14, 2009, at 8:26 AM, Bill Woodcock wrote:
If the Gates Foundation was operating a service-provider network, and
providing Internet connectivity services to the public, free of
charge or
restriction, and made the determination that they couldn't afford
AfriNIC's fees, then yes, that would be one edge case.
I see. It would seem you're pre-supposing significantly more
requirements than whether or not the organization makes a profit
("free of charge or restriction", so a non-profit in a country that
requires ISPs to restrict access would be disallowed from benefiting
from this policy?). If that is the intent of the proposal, it should
probably be made explicit.
That's the difference, in law, in most places, between a for-profit
and a not-for-profit.
I'm not a lawyer nor am I aware of the legal definition of "non-
profit" in the various venues in Africa, so I guess I'll take your
word for it. However, in my experience in the AP region, the concept
of non-profit as defined by law (which was typically a distinction
relevant only to the tax code) was quite rare and _exceptionally_
difficult to obtain (e.g., in Japan back in the mid-90s when I looked
at getting APNIC non-profit status, I believe there were two (2) non-
profits defined by law, one being the Red Cross (I forget the other),
and they required the sponsorship of the empress of Japan to gain that
status).
The situation is probably different in Africa, of course.
As a not-for-profit, AfriNIC
Is AfriNIC a non-profit according to the laws of Mauritius? According
to its by-laws:
"3.1 The Company shall be a private company limited by guarantee."
As a private company, AfriNIC may choose to do with its profits as it
sees fit. In by-law 3.2, it chooses not to distribute its profits to
its members, but by-laws can be amended by the company at any time.
Now, if you're saying that the rule of law is not strong enough in
Africa
to support the distinction between for-profit and not-for-profit
organizations, that seems perhaps unnecessarily pessimistic to me, but
everyone's entitled to their view.
Quite the contrary. I'm saying that unlike in the US, the legal
definition of 'non-profit' varies from one legal jurisdiction to
another and that this policy would place a non-trivial burden of
determining whether a requester (or member?) is a 'non-profit' on a
small staff with limited resources (which this policy would
exacerbate) who (I assume) have limited knowledge of the legal
definition of 'non-profit' in the various legal venues in their
service area. Given there is no agreed upon legal definition of "non-
profit", this policy would create vast grey area that AfriNIC staff
would need to wade through and make subjective judgement calls. Seems
like a bad idea to me.
Ignoring the legal status, AfriNIC could require applicants for free
IPv6 addresses to provide their by-laws demonstrating they act in a
non-profit manner (add whatever other requirements are appropriate
here) and require those folks who obtained IPv6 addresses under this
policy to notify AfriNIC of any by-law changes (and to then pay
AfriNIC the (inflation adjusted?) fees), but I suspect this would not
have the desired affect (but could make lawyers who revise by-laws in
various countries happier).
Regards,
-drc
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